THE 



RELIGION OF THE UNIVERSE 

WITH 

CONSOLATOKY VIEWS OF A FUTTJEE STATE ; 

AND SUGGESTIONS ON 

THE MOST BENEFICIAL TOPICS 

OF 

THEOLOGICAL INSTRUCTION. 



BY 

ROBERT EELLOWES, LL.D. 



DEUM SCIRE EST NIHIL NESCIRE. 



THIRD EDITION. 



REVISED, WITH ADDITIONS FROM THE AUTHOR'S MS.; AND A 
PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. 



WILLIAMS AKD NOKGATE, 

14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON; 

AND 

20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. 
1864. 



4k Die Zeit des bloss bistoriscben Glaubens ist vorbei, wenn die 
Moglichkeit unmittelbarer Erkeruitiiiss gegeben ist. Wir liaben 
eine alt ere Offenbariing als jede gescbriebene, die Natur. Diese 
entbalt Yorbilder die noch kein Menscb gedeutet bat, wabrend die 
der gescbriebenen. ibre ErfuHung and Auslegimg langst erbalten 
baben. Es ist nicbt die Zeit alte Gegensatze wieder zu erwecken, 
sendern das ausser und iiber allem Gegensatz liegende zu suchen." 
— Scbelling, liber das Wesen der mmsclilichen Freiheit, "Werke, 
Band viL, 1, p. 415. 



HERTFORD : 
Printed by Stephen Austi.x. 



/ 

//l 7 



/3</ 

THE EDITOR'S PEEFACE. 



Two editions of this work having been ex- 
hausted, a revised reprint of it may not be un- 
serviceable. 

Its fc bject at least can never be uninterest- 
. ng ; and it is one deriving increased interest 
from recent circumstances, For we seem to 
be on the verge of a crisis which has already 
more than once occurred in history, when it be- 
came imperatively necessary to look beyond 
existing creeds and establishments to seek broader 
foundations of religion in nature and the human 
soul. The failure of the attempt to restore 
mediaeval ecclesiasticism was inevitable in an age 
of freedom and of science, when the notion of 
miracle — that prime mover of all superstition, is 

rapidlv receding in every cultivated mind before 

b 



vi 



editor's preface. 



that of undeviating order, of a Providence actively 
manifested in nature, instead of presiding in apa- 
thetic or unfriendly isolation above it. So that it 
remains only to try the other side of the alterna- 
tive, by honestly and unambiguously renouncing 
what is really obsolete, and endeavouring to re- 
construct the national faith on a rational basis. 

And it were hard to say how this is to be 
done unless as here suggested, namely, by the 
religion of the universe ; — consisting theoreti- 
cally in the pursuit of truth, practically in that 
of goodness or morality. Every superstitious 
error may be traced to some wayward misap- 
prehension of these all important requisites. 
But their exact appreciation supposes a know- 
ledge of the human mind as well as of nature 
which was impossible in earlier times, and which 
is far from common even now. It was reserved 
for Lessing to repeat to modern ears the Socratic 
axiom that for human beings truth is not a pos- 
session, but a pursuit — a thing never more really 
wanting than when thought to be already won. 1 

1 He says (vol. x. p. 53, Lachmann's Edition) "not the possession, 



editor's preface. 



vii 



It was virtually lost to religion when the latter 
became identified with a dogmatic creed ; a creed 
engendered among those morbid controversies of 
the Greek church about Christ's person in which 
his precepts were so lamentably neglected. And 
since religious opinions are of all others the most 
obstinately held and defended, the breach became 
at last irreparable ; it was made so when the 
nominalistic schoolman closed the long unavailing 
effort to rationalize his creed by insisting on blind 
belief ; and, again, when at a later day the Bibli- 
cistj though already made aware of the defects of 
the sacred volume, began to deprecate over-curious 
enquiry, comforting himself with the assurance 
that all divine truth must needs agree, and that 
therefore, in spite of unpromising appearances, 
all would at length be found to be harmonious 
and right. 

"but the continual and upright pursuit of truth tends to the perfec- 
tion of human nature, "vv^ere God to offer me the alternative of 
all truth, in his right hand, and the incessant desire for it, coupled 
with liability to perpetual error in his left, I would take the left 
and say, 'Father, my choice is here ; pure truth is for thee alone.' 
However, Charron had already declared that they who disown the 
propriety of doubt are ignorant of the very nature of knowledge 
(Petit Traicte, 4, 4). 



viii 



editor's preface. 



In early times tradition helps to preserve tlie 
knowledge of one age for the benefit of another ; 
and the invention of writing affords still better 
means of perpetuating prior acquisitions for the 
use of future generations. But a time comes 
when these no longer suffice, and when unlimited 
improvements are needed. Civilization then halts 
if undue importance be ascribed to the traditions 
and writings of antiquity ; still more so if such 
writings are set up by self-styled guardians of 
truth as final and infallible ; or, worse than 
all, if under the paralyzing influences of conven- 
tionalism and materialism men become fastidiously 
indifferent to truth, and sceptical as to its 
existence. 

The estrangement of religion from morality 
arose in a similar way. In a large sense morality 
may be said to include all that concerns the pro- 
gress of a finite being towards perfection/ its aim 
thus clearly coinciding with that of religion. But 
the affinity disappeared under church manage- 
ment through the obtrusion of subtleties of belief, 
of artificial sanctities and devotional exercises in 



editor's preface. 



ix 



the place of duty ; the confusion being completed 
by the unscrupulous conduct of ecclesiastical 
government, the spurious patterns of theocratic 
excellence proposed by the Bible, and generally 
by the effect of fanciful notions about inspiration 
in arbitrarily substituting conventional standards 
for the real standard revealed in conscience and in 
nature. Nor have matters been much changed 
by the churches and sects of modern Protestan- 
tism, all availing themselves of pious pretence 
in pursuing a common aim of political rivalry 
and ascendancy, one by means of Bibliolatry and 
tracts, the other by affecting the ecclesiastical 
formalism of the middle ages. 1 

Even when natural morality revived in opposi- 
tion to the church system, its progress was checked 
by uncertainties of theory, and by narrow notions 
as to government. The latter, like philosophy in 
general, was treated mechanically. It was con- 
ceived as mere overruling force, or, at least, as a 

1 The actual condition of the world forms a pungent illustration 
of the practical results of religious insincerity ; the almost universal 
predominance of self-interested violence over reason and right 
seems a strange climax of eighteen professedly Christian centuries. 



X 



editor's preface. 



skilfully arranged artificial balance of individual 
forces, the self-interested units or natural men of 
Mandeyille and Hobbes. Moral interests were 
unregarded and unrecognised, except so far as 
the church was again summoned to exercise 
the would-be moral functions in which, with 
larger opportunities, it had already so signally 
failed. Self-preservation is the first law of 
ethically undeveloped man ; his natural guide 
is utility, a narrow view of his immediate 
self-interest. In recognising this principle 
Spinoza agreed with Hobbes ; and there ensued 
an inevitable tendency to demoralization ; since 
utility, however empirically serviceable as a 
measure, is poor and inadequate as a mo- 
tive ; and although it be admitted that indi- 
vidual and universal interests must ultimately 
coincide, the point of coincidence transcends 
the limited vision of man, whose utilitarian 
projects are necessarily more or less special, exer- 
cising in the exclusive contemplation of them a 
correspondingly narrowing influence over his 
general character. There may be little difference 



editor's preface. 



xi 



in point of result whether we act from universal 
axioms of benevolence, or from rational estimates 
of good ; but there may be a wide divergency of 
character and principle ; the whole moral being 
may depend on the alternative of the utile and 
the honest um, of making pleasure or duty the 
beacon of our life. The author of the present 
treatise, though admitting the paramount claim 
of duty, and disparaging the usurious calculations 
of eudsemonism, generally advocates virtue on 
utilitarian grounds ; and these, no doubt, are an 
indispensable consideration in the conduct of life ; 
yet the former is the truly moral motive, which 
it is important to distinguish in theory, though 
scarcely to be found alone in practice. The two 
spheres, though practically intermingling, are not 
concentric ; yet each has its due place and title to 
appreciation. The empirical philosophy mounts 
from below upward ; its scale of happiness extends 
from self to family and country in an ever- widen- 
ing circle ; nor can there be any reason why, if 
religion be aspiration, enlarged aspirations of this 
kind should not be deemed religious. But viewed 



xii 



editor's preface. 



from this side only they lack the higher physiog- 
nomy, the Ml dimensions of the feeling. Reli- 
gion looks primarily to the absolute and ideal ; 
whereas utilitarianism, however philosophically 
exalted, lingers within the limits of the re- 
lative, always leading back to the standard 
of pleasure or of self. Ostensibly virtuous 
actions often originate selfishly ; as where self- 
denial is practised in view of a heavenly reward, 
or justice is done in order to earn just treatment. 
But selfishness cannot expand into genuine bene- 
volence without undergoing a transmutation of its 
nature ; even love cherished with a view to the 
perfection of our own virtue is still imperfect. 
And though it were overstrained to disregard the 
product of mixed motives, and to limit all virtue, 
with Kant, to the formal or absolute type, still it 
must be allowed that the thought of duty should 
precede that of utility, and that action is properly 
moral in proportion as it is disinterested. " Le 
bon," says Rousseau, u s'ordonne par rapport au 
tout ; le mechant ordonne le tout par rapport a 
lui." But action cannot afford to wait for the 



editor's preface. 



xiii 



completion and perfection of human knowledge, 
and therefore considerations of utility are good 
servants but bad masters; 1 they may instruct the 
conscience, but cannot take its place. 

The form of the following treatise being mainly 
didactic, an advocacy of religion considered as 
identical with knowledge, it may not be amiss to 
prefix a short historical introduction to the actual 
aspects of the problem as seen from the moral side. 
The inevitable conflict of religion with religious 
establishment is one of the broadest and clearest 
of historical lessons. At the close of Soman 
Paganism, religion retreated from public observa- 
tion to become ascetical and even revolutionary ; 
it quitted the temples to occupy the sanctuary of 
the human heart, where it was hailed with ex- 
ulting satisfaction by the Stoic and the Christian. 
The true kingdom of Christ was there found in 
the ideal ; and the practical preparation for it 
was summed up in the. word "righteousness a 

1 Quod dicitur non Carneadi tantum sed et aliis, — 
Utilitas justi prope mater et sequi — 
verum non est — sed naturali juri utilitas accedit. 

Grotius de Jure Belli. Proleg. 16. 



xiv 



editor's preface. 



righteousness opposed to Judaical legality, and 
emphatically consisting in purity of heart and 
disposition ; since it was rightly assumed that if 
the stream is to run clear the source must be 
purified, and that a good tree will bring forth 
good fruit. Christianity thus laid the foundation 
of all true morality; 1 and, notwithstanding the 
unfair insinuations of opponents, was doubtless a 
highly salutary reaction, a reillumination as well 
as emancipation of the conscience, the true salt of 
a corrupt world. But for the realization V)f the 
perfect righteousness which it insisted oh, not only 
a good disposition, but a perfect law was required ; 
and this at the time was apparently not forth- 
coming. The want of such a rule was "but ; ill 
supplied by a few excellent maxims of a general 
and comprehensive character, and by a vague 
reference to the ancient law of Mosesk The 
first were inadequate to meet the manifold exi- 

1 It should, however, be stated that even prior to Christianity 
there was a tendency to recognise intention rather than utility as 
the true centre of Ethics, — as instanced in the stoical distinction of 
"KadrjKov" and " Karop0a>fta," i.e. the right act considered in itself 
alone, or as completed in being accompanied by the right motive. 



editor's preface. 



XV 



gencies of life ; 1 and Mosaic law, encumbered as 
it was with artificial technicalities, was soon dis- 
covered to be inapplicable or obsolete ; so that 
St. Paul, actuated by a deep sense of human 
inability to fulfil the requirements of perfect 
righteousness, altered the original Christian theory 
by formally repudiating Mosaic law, and by re- 
ferring the otherwise hopeless solution of the 
moral problem to a Divine gift or grace. But 
this, apart from untenable miraculous assump- 
tions, amounted, as then understood, only to a 
more intensely one-sided assertion of the original 
Christian postulate of purity of heart, whose 
practical deficiency has already been adverted to. 
It was a too exclusive reference of the whole 
moral life to the inward disposition apart from 
any clearly defined rule ; and it is generally found 
in experience that moral delinquency arises far 
oftener from inadequate direction and know- 
ledge than from obliquity of intention. The 
consequences of the deficiency were felt at the 
time, as they have often been since, in many fatal 
1 See Mr. Mill on Liberty, p. 88. 



xvi 



editor's preface. 



aberrations ; an over-strained asceticism on one 
side, and a reckless libertinism on the other. 
St. Paul had himself occasion to rebuke the 
vegetarian rigorists of Rome, as well as the self- 
indulgence of the professing spiritualist who made 
his liberty an excuse for licentiousness. The 
transference of the aim and reward of virtue to 
a future life made the rule of action in this more 
and more uncertain. The usual tendency gene- 
rated by such views was ascetical, contemplating 
present wretchedness as an earnest of future 
felicity. The world's friendship was enmity with 
God, and it was easier for a camel to penetrate a 
needle's eye than for a rich man to enter the 
divine kingdom. The Christian lived to a great 
extent in a moral Goshen, estranged by conscien- 
tious scruples from any hearty co-operation in 
secular duties. He was severed not only from the 
temples, festivals, and games, but from many of 
the most necessary obligations and occupations of 
the citizen. Generally speaking, he looked on 
marriage, not as a holy and rational union, but 
as an extorted concession for the avoidance of 



editor's preface. 



xvii 



greater evil. Yet he was not consistent in his 
asceticism. Severity veered round to laxity ; 
Encratites contrasted with Mcolaitans, Carpo- 
cratians, and Antitakts ; some indulged unblush- 
ingly in actual iropveua, while others shrank from 
even the most distant contact with an ideal 
iropveia ; even Tertullian, who often insists on the 
necessity of electing between God and the Devil, 
occasionally discards over -scrupulous rigor, de- 
claring "We are no Brahmins or Gymnosophists." 
In short, the Christian spiritualism, though 
undoubtedly a magnificent assertion of mental 
purity and freedom, was exaggerated and fanatical ; 
it was a freedom without any earthly home or 
certain application ; an irregular vindication of 
independence awaiting reliable guidance, and 
which casual differences of temperament or opi- 
nion were sure to betray into oppositely pernicious 
extremes. 

Here the church stepped in, attempting, after 
its own peculiar fashion, to restore order to the 
moral chaos. Christianity doubtless comprehended 
in the best sense of the word the idea of a church ; 



xviii 



editor's preface . 



since with the duty of loving God is connected 
love of the brotherhood, and its virtues could be 
practised only in association. An association 
wisely and honestly directed to the realization of 
moral ends may be said to be the true Platonic 
State, the real kingdom of God upon earth ; and 
had the church been such an association, its ad- 
vocates might fairly have asserted its claim to be 
the "Civitas Dei/' But the ideal " communion 
of saints" was cruelly belied by the human insti- 
tution. The immediate object of the latter was 
not moral but political. Civilisation lay in ruins, 
and the first step to its restoration was a system 
of legal coercion. Authority could be established 
only on the basis of compromise ; it could deal 
with acts, but could not read intentions. Hence 
it was essentially immoral both in its origin and 
in its operation. Freedom, the very soul of mo- 
rality, was rudely sacrificed to a tyrannically 
prescribed system dictated by ecclesiastical in- 
terests ; and the idea of virtue was fatally warped 
by the interposition of a delusive medium pre- 
tending to infallibility between conscience and 



editor's preface. 



xix 



God. The moral vigilance of churchmen is fore- 
stalled by implicit reliance on an external initia- 
tive, and on a profession of dogmatic faith which 
always clings more readily to persons than to 
principles. Hence the substitution of what Les- 
sing calls the "Christian religion" for the " reli- 
gion of Christ — metaphysical niceties of opinion 
about the person of the Saviour diverted attention 
from his teaching ; and all the narrowness of 
ecclesiastical sectarianism is already expressed in 
the Biblical injunction (2 John, v. 10), "If any 
come to you with the wrong doctrine, turn him 
out of doors." Morality suffered, too, from the 
mechanical nature of church administration, which 
beginning with the "libri pcenitentiales," ended 
in the more elaborate casuistry of later times. 
For the purposes of such a system it was necessary 
to provide expressly for special emergencies, to 
classify persons and offences, to distinguish venial 
from deadly sin, the common man from the 
spiritual aristocrat or saint. But with artificial 
estimates of this kind determined by external 
criteria, in which a different quantum of merit is 



XX 



editor's preface. 



required from different persons, one from the mass, 
another from a peculiar class supposed to be able to 
endure it, the doors of laxity are opened, and true 
virtue is lost sight of. The higher scale of merit 
contemplated in such a system is but a formal 
sanctity more or less easily simulated or evaded ; 
the lower becomes an accommodation to existing 
practice, soon forfeiting every pretension to be a 
moral discipline at all. So, too, when certain 
offences are parted off as deadly or irremissible, 
all other ostensibly reprehensible acts fall into the 
category of the venial, as daily and hourly human 
liabilities, soon ceasing to be practicallj^onsidered 
in the light of moral delinquencies. The seat of 
morality being the will, it follows that law, deal- 
ing merely with acts, can influence it only in- 
directly and partially. Law is aptly described by 
St. Paul as a schoolmaster, provisionally leading 
rude minds towards a higher spiritual state ; when 
this state has been to some extent attained by the 
awakening of the conscience, reason asserts a right 
to be its own legislator, superseding the control of 
rules whose interference thenceforth becomes use- 



editor's preface. xxi 

less or misleading. In short, morality cannot be 
made amenable to an external jurisdiction ; and 
nothing is more demoralising than attempts to 
make it so. 

From these and other causes, the corruption of 
Christendom increased with its organisation and 
extension. Religion sank into respectable con- 
formity ; fasts, alms-giving, and praying super- 
seded weightier matters ; every offence had its 
condition of absolution, and the per-contra of sin 
and satisfaction was accurately catalogued in hand- 
books of the confessional. The church in bestow- 
ing absolution used to impose certain penances 
on offenders as evidences of contrition and con- 
ditions of re-admission to communion. Church 
forgiveness was, however, soon confounded with 
divine forgiveness ; ecclesiastical penance changed 
into a formal satisfaction for sin ; and the habit 
of commuting severe penalties for milder ones, 
of expiating moral offences by external acts or 
money payments, became the source of endless 
abuse. The Rabbinical doctrine of works of 

supererogation was adopted by the church, and 

c 



xxii 



editor's preface. 



taking a dogmatical form in the hands of the 
schoolmen, facilitated the scandal of Indulgences. 
In short, virtue, which had originally been centred 
in the heart and disposition, changed under church 
management into a routine of conventional work- 
righteousness, in which purity of disposition was 
wholly overlooked. 

It was the immorality of church practice rather 
than its perversities of speculation, which both in 
antiquity and in modern times provoked the most 
serious opposition. The rottenness of the tree was 
made known by the bitterness of the fruit. The 
political exigencies of Christendom amid the ruin 
of ancient order temporarily silenced the remon- 
strances of the Montanist, the Novatian, and the 
Donatist ; but at a later day indignant protests 
again began to be heard wherever reviving culture 
found a safe asylum beyond the range of church 
influence. The poets of southern France, of Ger- 
many, and Italy, declaimed against ecclesiastical 
scandals in the name of morality as freely as did 
the Waldenses and other precursors of the Refor- 
mation in that of religion. For example, the poet 



editor's preface. 



xxiii 



Thomasin 1 declared that God is no magician, who 
for money changes evil into good ; that virtue is its 
own recompense, and that intent alone stamps the 
character of act. Abelard, a century earlier, made 
a similar announcement, attempting, though in 
the absence of any clearly defined natural rule of 
course ineffectually, to check the externality of 
the system. It was the adversaries of the church 
who made the first successful efforts to reclaim the 
bewildered conscience. The classical Revivalists 
were also revivers of natural morality ; nor were 
the Deists the mere utterers of barren negations 
they are sometimes described to be. From the 
first Lord Herbert of Cherbury proclaimed God, 
virtue, immortality, as the creed of natural reli- 
gion ; nor was Deism opposed to real Christianity; 
it denounced only the false pretences, the eccle- 
siastical traditions and other monstrosities usurp- 
ing its place. Yet it may be truly said that the 
foremost aim of the time, and indeed that of the 
preceding century and a half since the fall of 

1 About a.d. 1220. See Gervirms, History of German Poetry, 
Vol. L, p. 436, 



xxiv 



editor's preface. 



Constantinople, was to secure against mental 
tyranny the grand preliminary condition of all 
intellectual and moral health, namely, freedom. 
The mental history of modern Europe has been 
pre-eminently a struggle for freedom — freedom in 
government, in philosophy, and in religion. Art 
and literature contributed to the movement ; but 
the Lutheran reformation stands emphatically 
foremost among emancipating efforts, because 
superstition is the worst enemy of liberty, and 
because opinion conquers the world only when it 
appears under the form of religion. But the 
revival of learning and the wonderful progress of 
physical discovery, essentially aided the cause by 
creating an intellectual dominion apart from theo- 
logy. Politics, too, led in the same direction. 
For when the tyrannous unity of Rome broke up, 
it had to be replaced by national governments; 
and since it was necessary that these, in order to 
be successful, should be strong, even the absolutist 
doctrines of Machiavelli and Hobbes may be said 
to have been a step towards freedom. Then came 
a struggle for the same important object within 



editor's preface. 



XXV 



Protestantism itself ; a reaction against State 
tyranny and the tyranny of the Bible letter ; 
against all those lingering prejudices and tradi- 
tions which timidity or habit still obstinately 
cherished. Kant summoned the timid and in- 
dolent to commence the struggle for intellectual 
emancipation; "heed not/' he cried, "the in- 
sidious advice of self-interested alarmists ; you 
may possibly stumble and fall in the first attempt 
to walk alone ; but you never will walk if you 
fear to make the effort." 1 

Freedom is the first condition of moral ex- 
istence ; everything is demoralising which narrows 
it ; which decentralises the agent by substituting 
external for internal principles of action. The 
church, which displaced free will by submitting 
it to the control of priests, was more demoralising 
because more radically subversive of freedom 
than any civil despotism ; utilitarianism, too, de- 
moralises when referring us chiefly or solely to 
external motives ; when, in short, it pretends to 
be morality instead of contenting itself with the 
name of science. 

1 Werke. 7, 1, p. 145. 



xxvi 



editor's preface. 



But what is the true nature, the actual seat of this 
all-important faculty, to realize and substantiate 
which so many noble efforts have been made ? It 
cannot be in outward things, for they obey imperious 
necessity ; it exists — if anywhere — in the human 
soul alone ; and the vitality of its outer forms w^ill 
ever be found to depend on its conscious internal 
realisation. Yet even here its existence is dis- 
puted ; empirical philosophers deny its reality and 
proclaim it to be a dream. Nor are they wholly 
wrong in so doing ; since within the limits of 
experience there is no independent cause, no un- 
conditional initiative. But what they deny so con- 
fidently, feeling and conscience with equal per- 
tinacity affirm. Man refuses to place himself on 
the level of beasts and stones, or to treat virtue 
and duty as empty names ; an inward voice pro- 
claims him to be responsible and free ; but then 
this freedom must lie beyond the limits of the 
phenomenal ; each voluntary act will be found, 
in this view of the case, to imply a startling 
mystery, deeply underlying the foundations 
of his moral being ; and thus the instinctively 



editor's preface. 



xxvii 



suggested privilege, so paradoxical in theory yet 
so necessary and undeniable in fact, becomes the 
revelation of a divine life, opening the door of a 
new world. 1 It was 'thought by some that rational- 
ism had for ever ended the belief in a spiritual 
world ; whereas it was precisely the nobler forms 
of rationalism, and especially Kant's illustrations 
of the nature of freedom, which placed that belief 
on a firmer footing than before. 

But freedom is not the sole moral requisite ; 
considered in individual isolation it is not moral at 
all. Alone its very existence is unintelligible, and 
at the most it can only be another name for vague 
self-assertion. Even if good intent be superadded 
to it in this restricted sense there results only 
a well-meaning caprice more likely to blunder 
than to prosper. The defect of primitive Christ- 
ianity recurs wherever there is no ascertained law 
to guide the emancipated conscience ; and this 
the apostles of liberty have usually admitted. 2 

1 Kant and Schelling show freedom to be conceivable only in 
God ; when confronted with the Infinite and Omnipotent indi- 
viduality vanishes, and freedom becomes impossible. 

2 <k Alas !" exclaims Rousseau, "for those who talk about liberty, 



xxviii 



editor's preface. 



But there has been a difference as to the true 
nature of the law and as to its bases ; some treat- 
ing it as intuitively given, some as externally 
"set" or prescribed by a superior Being; some 
ready to sacrifice freedom itself to the safe re- 
straints of custom and establishment ; others, like 
the ancient libertines or mediaeval spiritualists, 
opening the door by mystical enthusiasm to 
licentious caprice. Yery similar in its results 
to the last mentioned hypothesis was the 
"natural law" asserted by the selfish theory 
of some modern philosophers, contemplating 
man in his individual capacity as isolated 
proprietor of certain innate inalienable rights 
which society, by express or implied contract, is 
bound to enforce for him. For here the order of 
the State stood perpetually in jeopardy from the 
self-assertion of the individual. And it is a 

while their hearts are full of slavish vices, and who think that to 
be mutinous is to be free. Divine Liberty — if these poor people 
really comprehended thee — if they knew the price at which alone 
thou art conquered and preserved — how much more inexorably 
exacting it is than even the yoke of tyrants — their effeminate souls 
would dread thee far more than servitude ; they would shun thee 
as a weight about to crush them." 



editor's preface. 



xxix 



significant commentary on this theory that the 
natural rights so claimed were at last reduced by 
its more recent advocates, Kant and Fichte, to the 
single one of freedom, leaving the problem of 
a regulating law still vague and unexplained. 
The notion of freedom throve under the aegis of a 
superficial philosophy, which in one-sided atten- 
tion to individuals abandoned the world to a 
number of intrinsically unconnected units, as hard 
and unsympathising politically as the physical 
atoms of Leucippus or Grassendi. But it remained 
throughout a merely private virtue, 1 little ap- 
preciated by politicians, and ill understood even 
by those who cherished it. And, indeed, it seemed 
at last as if there was no general order or Deity at 
all ; none at least save a God of human initiation, 
and a social order entirely subservient to indi- 
vidual caprice. No wonder that under these 
circumstances a collision ensued between the 
champions of freedom and of establishment ; that 
the rebound of the inward life, which had been 

1 "Animi libertas privata virtus est; imperii virtus securitas." 
— Spinoza's Tract. Polity i. 6. 



XXX 



editor's preface. 



overlooked in the constitution of modern States, was 
unchecked by moral considerations, and that the 
terrors of the French revolution made timid politi- 
cians 1 cling with greater pertinacity to the habitual 
securities provided by churches and governments. 
But the true law is neither the selfish right which 
is revolutionary, nor the arbitrary behests 2 of 
ecclesiastical or civil despotism. It is neither the 
necessity of Calvin, nor, as thought by Locke, 3 an 
external rule imposed by Omnipotence, and en- 
forced by special penalties distinct from natural 
consequences. It is the living and self-effectuating, 
and at the same time intelligible law encompas- 
sing and pervading all things, which is established 
not only in external agencies and existences, but 
in the heart and reason of man, and in the being 

1 As Stahl, De Maistre, etc. etc. 

2 It has been said that the word law is improperly applied to 
the order of the universe, because the latter transcends what is 
usually understood by it as acting from within instead of from 
without — including unconscious as well as conscious agents — and 
combining executive functions with those of legislation. And yet, 
though never fully formulated or expounded, it is the ideal type 
and basis of all law ; so that the ancient legislators made no vain 
pretence when they affected to derive their laws from heaven. 

3 Essay, 2, 28, 6. 



editor's preface. 



xxxi 



of God ; the supreme good, as well as overruling 
necessity, whose control implies no forfeiture of 
freedom, since it is itself the basis of our free- 
dom and of our truest nature. 1 For free will is 
not capricious; it is surrounded by conditions, 
and indeed is self-conditioned, being always 
more or less associated with reason ; and reason 
is not merely the faculty of apprehending the 
conditioning law as a rule to be submitted to, but 
also of assimilating and incorporating it through 
a distinct recognition of its intrinsic excellence 
and propriety as homogeneous with itself. Ra- 
tional freedom thus coincides with rational neces- 
sity ; the choice of love is but an adoption of the 
will of the beloved object. The divine life through 
which alone we are free, or even exist at all, is 

1 Evil being the undue distortion of the will to the side of self, 
to the prejudice of the wider and better nature, which may be 
indifferently called virtue, or reason, or wisdom. The latter is 
thus eloquently described in a book quite equal in excellence 
to many of those esteemed "canonical:" — "Wisdom is more 
moving than any motion ; she passeth and goeth through all things 
by reason of her pureness. For she is the breath of the power of 
God, a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty ; she 
is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the 
power of God, and the image of his goodness.'' Wisdom, ch. vii. 24. 



XXX11 



EDITOR S PREFACE. 



also the divine law silently furnishing the condi- 
tions of existence, the infinite will progressively 
educating the finite towards moral perfection, 
consisting in the perfect agreement of one with 
the other. It is also the true source of catholic 
fellowship, making us essentially members of one 
another ; 1 a law of love, practically operating 
more or less through individual feelings and in- 
terests, but which in itself is the pure code of an 
unselfish virtue practised solely for virtue's sake ; 
a legislation which, in the systems of Grotius, 
Cudworth, Leibnitz, etc., occasionally assumes a 
semblance of superiority to God, where the latter 
is Deistically conceived as an isolated will apart 
from it. 2 Here again, as well as in the recesses 
of its own free consciousness, the finite soul obtains 

1 The original Christian idea of unity was the same (1 Cor. xii. 
12; Eph. iv. 3-16; 1 Epist. Clem, ch, 46; Lactant. Inst. 5, 6, 
12, etc.) ; but this unity was very different from that externally 
realised in the visible church. 

2 The creed of modern theism, like that of Aristotle and other 
great men, appears to hesitate between the extremes of Pantheism 
and Deism ; striving to unite the conceptions of Omnipresence and 
Infinitude with those of self-conscious thought and self-deter- 
mining will. 



editor's preface. xxxiii 

a glimpse of the spiritual world to which it really 
belongs, and which gladdens it whenever by fresh 
acquisitions of knowledge or by deeds of unselfish 
conformity it anticipates a portion of the bliss 
attendant on reunion with the Infinite ; a reflec- 
tion which may well enable us to dispense with 
the "where" or "how" of a future existence, if 
we really believe and feel that the divine life is 
everywhere and always the only true life — that to 
be with God implies no " desolating Pantheism/' 
since it can only mean the removal of an obstruc- 
tion, and that we shall be in Him then, as He is 
in us now. The best preparation for such a change 
must be the rectification of the will, the purification 
of the motives and affections, the escape from ma- 
terial and selfish interests to moral and universal, 
The universal law is revealed in the human con- 
science and in science ; yet it is not to be rashly 
confounded with special utilities or random in- 
tuitions. The finite will is never quite genuine 
and rationally self-centred ; it is misled by many 
disturbing affections and misconceptions. There 
are doubtless certain dispositions or forms of 



xxxiv 



editor's preface. 



the conscience to which we can no more refuse 
approval than we can to the axioms of thought or 
of mathematics ; and it is equally true that cir- 
cumstances and science must be consulted for the 
regulation of our actions. But science is imper- 
fect, and dispositions require educating ; they 
have to deal with infinitely varied relations ; they 
are under the tuition of the supreme law which 
ever lies before us as an ideal, and which, though 
easily read in its main outlines, remains the object 
of our unceasing study and aspiration. 



THE AUTHOK'S PEEFACE. 



In the course of no very short life I have made 
religious truth the primary object of my pursuit. 
In this pursuit, which has been subject to many 
and sometimes long interruptions, from the dis- 
tractions of political excitement, or the seductions 
of literary ease, my opinions have undergone con- 
siderable changes, in proportion as my reason has 
been more exercised, and my intellectual view 
more enlarged. I have thus travelled far and 
wide from the confines of what is commonly 
called orthodoxy, at which I set out, till, after 
a long period of doubt and perplexity, my mind 
has, at length, found the serenity of conviction, 
and my heart the solace of hope, in a pure and 
unsophisticated theism. 

In the various changes of opinion which it has 
been my fate to undergo, a strong sense of duty 
has never suffered me to disguise what I thought, 
or to suppress any belief which I entertained. If 
I ha v e erred, it has at least been with conscience 



xxxvi 



PREFACE. 



for my monitor, and' with the love of truth for 
my guide. 

When I published the " Essentials of a National 
Church/ 5 in 1819, I endeavoured to show how 
such a church might be founded on a very simple 
creed ; and I think I sufficiently proved that that 
simple creed was all that was required of the 
followers of Jesus in the apostolical age of the 
Christian church. Such a creed would have 
opened the doors of the establishment so wide 
as to include all denominations of Christians 
within its spacious pale. 

But the opinions which I now entertain, and 
which it is the object of this work to diffuse, 
appear to me much more likely to make the 
nature and constituents of true religion better 
understood than they have hitherto been ; and 
to prevent the human reason from being any 
longer perplexed, bewildered, and lost in the 
metaphysical labyrinths of the prevailing creeds. 

If the Eeligion of the Universe, of which I 
have here given rather a brief outline than a per- 
fect delineation, should ever be generally che- 
rished by the people, and encouraged by the 
government, the clergy of another generation 



PREFACE. 



XXXV11 



would become public teachers of a higher order 
and a more edifying kind. Instead of inculcating 
irrational, mysterious, and mischievous dogmas, 
they would lay all the works of nature under 
perpetual contribution in order to furnish in- 
struction to their auditors. The people would 
thus, every week, acquire more and more know- 
ledge of the Divine agency and perfections, 
Almost every object would be employed to bring 
that agency home to their minds ; and instead 
of living as they now do, to such a melancholy 
extent, without God in the world, every thing 
in the world would remind them of God.* 

The people would thus be continually awakened 
to the innumerable traces of the power, the wis- 
dom, and the goodness of the Deity. This know- 
ledge could not but be productive of the most 

* The Eeligion of the Universe traces the perfections of God 
through the wonders of the universe. But there is a great differ- 
ence between seeing God in every thing and making every thing 
God. The Eeligion of the Universe discerns the Divine wisdom 
in the mechanism of the human brain ; but it does not therefore 
deify the human head. It does not, like some Pantheistic systems, 
deify man, or confound God with the outward world. It makes 
an immutable distinction between that which shows his perfections, 
and the ineffable nature in which those perfections exist. The 
mirror which reflects the countenance is very different from the 
face which it enables us to see. 



XXXV111 



PREFACE. 



beneficial consequences. It would perpetually 
summon their thoughts before the tribunal of the 
Omniscient. It would enlighten their minds with 
respect to their probable final destiny, as well as 
their present true interests, while it would prove 
the best stay of a patriotic and beneficent govern- 
ment, and the most solid security of public liberty. 

Children outgrow their clothes ; and nations, 
which have their period of childhood, increase in 
intellectual stature, till their institutions no 
longer accord with the degree of their intelli- 
gence. Institutions, which are adapted to one 
state of mind, are unsuited to a different. One 
state of mind may endure a freedom from re- 
straint, from which it is perilous for another to 
be free. There are circumstances in which even 
the terrors of superstition may exert a salutary 
influence; and others, in which superstitious ob- 
servances only excite ridicule and disgust. Devo- 
tional formularies are apt to degenerate into 
empty sounds, and to become flat, stale, and un- 
profitable things. 

"When the creeds and formularies of an ignorant 
age are attempted to be perpetuated among an 
enlightened people, nothing can prolong their 



PREFACE. 



xxxix 



duration but the interests with which they are 
incorporated; or the secular honours and advan- 
tages to which they lead. But when the profes- 
sions of the lips are totally at Variance with the 
dictates of the mind and the impulses of the 
heart, and this variance is the effect of sordid 
motives operating on a large mass of society, is 
not the system, which is productive of so much 
evil, an abomination which every wise man must 
condemn, and every good man must deplore ? 

Christianity itself, as it is professed in this 
country, has degenerated into a totally different 
system from what it was in its original form. 

Avarice and ambition have made it subservient 
to their purposes, till its primary brightness is 
extinguished and its native loveliness destroyed. 

The public mind is gradually becoming ripe for 
religious institutions of a better, more edifying, 
and more comprehensive kind, than any which 
now exist, or have ever yet been seen. 

The Universe is not a dark room to the inquir- 
ing mind. It is hung with lights beaming with a 
Divine radiance, and revealing the most glorious 
truths. Here lessons of the most profound wis- 
dom are taught, and the most beneficent dis- 



xl 



PREFACE, 



coveries made. Here the Deity in his goodness 
has provided the human mind with the most 
luminous proofs of his own omnipresent agency 
and unutterable perfections. And these proofs 
are not few, isolated, and evanescent, but innume- 
rable, cumulative, and everlasting. They furnish 
a body of evidence that is perpetually increasing, 
and to which there are no limits. For that know- 
ledge of the Infinite and the Eternal which they 
contribute to unfold, can never have an end. 
"Deiim scire est nihil nescire." The existing 
religious systems, as far as they consist of mystic 
creeds and formularies, have a prejudicial ten- 
dency. Such creeds are either believed without 
evidence or professed without belief. Where a 
creed is believed without evidence, it is so far a 
nullity as it is not coupled with any act of the 
understanding. Where a creed is professed by 
the lips, but with a total disbelief of it in the 
mind, the insincerity that is habitually practised, 
must be fatally adverse to rectitude of principle 
and integrity of character. 

Sincerity in our thoughts, professions, and deal- 
ings, constitutes the most amiable feature of our 
nature as social beings ; and, therefore, those rich 



PREFACE. 



xli 



establishments which tempt men to profess what 
they do not believe, and to teach what they 
secretly disapprove, offer a premium upon hypo- 
crisy, and infuse a deleterious poison into the 
best qualities of the human heart. 

The creeds and formularies and various liturgic 
constituents of existing European religions are 
totally destitute of those lights of science which 
extend from earth to heaven ; and which, em- 
bracing all the complicated phenomena of matter 
and of mind, furnish the most clear and palpable 
evidence of the Divine agency and perfections. 
These are truths in an interminable series, of 
which more and more will be continually deve- 
loped to the view, in proportion as the mind is 
more assiduously cultivated, and the reflective 
faculty more vigorously exercised. 

Many years have now elapsed since these opin- 
ions made their first strong impression on my 
mind. I have mentioned them at different times 
to my friends ; and early in the year 1834, I 
availed myself of a favourable opportunity of 
giving them a more extensive publicity.* 

* See speech, of the Author at the University of London, in 
the note at the end of the preface, taken from the Examiner for 
March. 2nd, 1834. 



xlii 



PREFACE. 



Benjamin Constant remarks that when the re- 
ligious sentiment is attached to positive forms, 
it assumes a fixed and immutable character, and 
exhibits a repugnance to the progressive intelli- 
gence of the age. Religion thus degenerates into 
dogmas till it becomes a mere mass of positive 
assertions, mystified in their diction and incapable 
of proof. The religious sentiment is, as it were, 
petrified in the form to which it is attached. 
This seems the case in all the old governments 
of Europe, where religion is made a mere instru- 
ment for upholding the state. — Science is the only 
form to which the religious sentiment can now 
attach itself with any benefit to mankind. Here 
the immutable sentiment is linked to a perpetually 
varying form ; it is constantly kept in unison with 
augmented knowledge and increased civilization, 

Of the existing religious systems, which is 
there that has manifested any striking tendency 
to intellectualise mankind ? Have they not rather 
operated in a contrary direction ? Has not their 
primary object been to depress the people in order 
to elevate the priest, to make the first the victim 
of weak fears and dense ignorance, in order to 
establish the ascendancy of sacerdotal domination ? 



PREFACE. 



xliii 



Has it not been the practice to set up certain dog- 
matisms before which the understanding was to 
prostrate itself, which it was impiety to doubt, 
and blasphemy to gainsay ? But is this the way 
in which the Highest Intelligence ought to be 
adored ? Does not the Eternal Reason require the 
constant exercise of the rational faculty among 
his worshippers ? 

In the bewildering maze of corrupt systems, 
education — that education which is truly worthy 
of the name, as both enriching the mind and 
strengthening the understanding — has been in a 
great measure separated from religion ; my object 
is to make them coincide in one great scheme, and 
indeed to form, between them, an indissoluble 
union. Priest and schoolmaster woidd henceforth 
be one person ; and as there never can be a time, 
when any individual will know all that is to be 
known, of the Divine agency and perfections, the 
functions of the priest and the schoolmaster may 
be so identified as to benefit all classes of the com- 
munity in every diversity of age, and in every 
variety of circumstance. 

Religion being made t<j consist in the know- 
ledge of God, and that knowledge having no 



xliv 



PREFACE. 



bounds, those who teach it, according to its true 
principles and meaning, must bring the light of 
all the sciences, especially the comparatively neg- 
lected metaphysical and moral sciences, into the 
Divinity school, so that the Divine agency may 
be contemplated in all its effects, and Divine per- 
fection manifested in truths that will make a 
permanent impression on the mind. 

If the public good be the great object of 
government, how can it be more effectually pro- 
moted, than by diffusing among the people that 
type of religion which must be continually im- 
proving their minds and hearts, incessantly adding 
to their knowledge, and constantly teaching them 
to act according to their true interests ? 

A people thus instructed, and placed, as it were, 
in an atmosphere of ever-increasing mental light, 
would soon cease to be the victim of fanatics, the 
dupe of impostors and visionaries. Their religion, 
residing in knowledge, and impressing them with 
a perpetual consciousness of the Divine presence 
and attributes, would be very efficacious in ren- 
dering them sober, honest, industrious, imitators 
of God, and benefactors of their fellow creatures, 

When religion, that main-spring of the soul, 



PREFACE. 



xlv 



is intellectualised, both in theory and in practice, 
(and how can any other religion be acceptable to 
the Highest Intelligence ?), the mental progress 
of nations will wonderfully accelerate the improve- 
ment of their institutions. They will progres- 
sively become fit for higher and higher degrees of 
liberty. The social state will be ameliorated in 
all its details, in a degree beyond what the gross 
imaginations of men, in their present humiliating 
state of ignorance, can conceive. The conflict of 
parties and the strife of sects will cease. Happi- 
ness will increase a hundred-fold ; and religion, 
which has often been the scourge, the torment, 
and the curse, will become the stay, the security, 
the solace, the best instructor, the highest orna- 
ment, and the greatest blessing of mankind. 

Whatever may be the unknown country to 
which the Divine goodness may cause us to 
migrate after death, the Religion of the Universe, 
which consists in knowing Grod, must still be our 
first, our last pursuit ; the object to which our 
thoughts tend, and our affections cling. 

Many of the opinions which I have maintained 
in the present work, are too much opposed to the 
interests of certain influential classes, to permit me 



xlvi 



PREFACE. 



to hope that they will be extensively approved; 
or, if approved, that they will in all instances be 
openly professed. 

Even of those who assent to the great truth, 
that the works of the Deity contain the best, the 
most satisfactory, and the most instructive revela- 
tions of his wisdom and goodness, some will still 
continue to give an outward preference to that 
religion whose supposed superiority consists in its 
supernatural pretensions. But already we see 
miracles cease, prophecies fail, and hierarchies 
fall ; and the Religion of the Universe, containing 
in itself the principle of endless progression, will 
finally prevail over all other systems, till it 
becomes the study and the delight of every na- 
tion under heaven. 

The progress of knowledge, the laws of the 
Universe, and the constitution of the human 
mind, lead me to this conclusion ; and impress 
me with a calm but firm and unalterable assur- 
ance that it will come to pass. 

Robert Fellowes. 

31, Dorset Square, London, 
January 16*A, 1836. 



NOTE. 



The following are the sentiments which the author 
delivered at the annual meeting of the University of 
London, on the 26th of February, 1834. 

Me. Chaie^ain". — When this University was first 
established it was in advance of the age. It was, 
indeed, at the time, a grand experiment on the liberal 
principles of the community ; but, if we are to take the 
encouragment which it has received as a measure of that 
liberality, we must, I fear, graduate it a very low scale. 
It has not, indeed, ever got quite down to the freezing 
point; but it has never yet risen to that degree of 
generous heat, which should have warmed the heart 
and opened the hand in favour of this noble institution. 
A great deal has been said about the light of the age in 
which we are living, but, as far as respects the intel- 
lectual nature of man, there are several kinds of light, 
and with very different properties. There is a light 
that darkens the mind and hardens the heart; and I 
fear that the light, of which we are boasting, partakes 
a good deal of this character. For has it not blinded 
the minds of thousands to the benefits of this institution ? 



xlviii 



NOTE. 



Has it not hardened the heart that should have sympa- 
thised with its necessities ? Has it not paralysed the 
hand that should have contributed to its support ? But 
whatever may be the quantity or the quality of this 
light of the age — be it little or be it much — be it cloudy 
or be it clear — this is certain, that the prejudices of 
by-gone years, prejudices coming out of the deep night 
of ignorance and superstition, still throw their long 
shadows across our path, often bewildering our way, 
and always impeding the onward march of civilisation 
and improvement. Hence, and more particularly owing 
to this circumstance, we have not yet reached that 
region of serenity in the political state of man, that 
happy combination of the social elements, when truth, 
only truth, and nothing but the truth, — when truth, 
simple, unsophisticated truth ! — will receive the bold, 
unhesitating profession of every man's lips as well as 
the inward homage of every man's heart. Of all the 
forms in which vice can walk the earth, none is so 
loathsome as that of hypocrisy ; and yet this very vice 
is either so nurtured among us by the very nature 
of our institutions, or a free declaration of opinions on 
particular topics, exposes the individual to so much 
odium, so much obloquy, and such a multiplicity of 
vexations, that hypocrisy becomes early and almost 
necessarily intertwined in our actions and incorporated 
in our habits. If the principles of this institution had 
not had to contend with the inveterate hostility of so 
much puritanical cant, and so much pharisaical 
hypocrisy, is it probable that so little encouragement 



NOTE. 



xlix 



would have been given to an institution that opens its 
doors to the members of all religious communions, that 
excludes none, but invites all sects and creeds to partake 
of its literary benefits, and to drink without stint at its 
intellectual springs ? — And yet I fear that it is this very 
comprehensiveness in the nature and principles of this 
institution that has operated to its prejudice, that has 
retarded its progress and obstructed its success. Our 
finances would, I think, otherwise have been in a more 
flourishing condition. Instead of our expenditure 
exceeding our income, as it has up to the present year, 
our income would more probably have exceeded our 
expenditure. Contributions from all quarters, from 
individuals of all parties, from sectarians of all denomi- 
nations, would have poured into the treasury of this 
institute of wisdom, this sanctuary of science. — Sir, 
I call this building a sanctuary of science ; and I beg 
to know what better purpose it can serve ? or what 
higher destiny it can have ? For does not all science 
elucidate the Divine agency, develope the Divine laws, 
and manifest the Divine attributes ? A great luminary 
of the seventeenth century, Isaac Barrow, took these 
words for a motto to one of his mathematical works, 
" O Oeos lyeco/jLerpei" (i God is a Geometrician." And 
let me ask you, is there any art or science of which he 
is not the original source, the primary spring ? Take 
Paley's favourite instance, "Look at that perfection 
of mechanism, the human eye, and tell me what is the 
just, the legitimate inference ? Is it not this ? He who 
made the eye, shall He not seer" And, let me ask 



i 



NOTE. 



you, can you have a more edifying monitor, a more 
animating guide to all that is great and good and 
elevating, than the consciousness of this omnipresent 
vision, this all-seeing eye ? Can any church in Christen- 
dom, can the church of Rome, with the pope and all 
the cardinals, or the church of Scotland, with all its 
presbyters, or the church of England with all its 
bishops, furnish any stronger inducement to purity 
of thought, to rectitude of intention, and to integrity of 
conduct ? "When then we are reviled as anti-religionists, 
when we are taunted with the objection that we give 
no theological instruction, I tell the slanderer that we 
hardly give anything else. For do not all our scientific 
classes partake, more or less, of a theological character ? 
Do they not all refer, more or less, to the acts, the 
volitions, the laws and ordinances of Deity in the moral, 
the intellectual and the material universe ? Nor can 
any student well attend any one lecture, in any one 
of those classes, without knowing more of the Divine 
agency than he did before. And, let me ask you, is 
not every science a manifestation of the Divine agency, 
with a constantly increasing evidence ? And remember 
that it is not an evidence that is apt to be dimmed with 
the obscurations of age, or weakened by length of years ; 
but that it is an evidence, of which every year will 
increase the light, and augment the strength. What 
I have said will, I think, suffice to show, that the 
principles of this University, instead of having an 
anti- religious tendency, have a tendency quite the 
contrary. Their tendency is to give more purity and 



NOTE. 



li 



simplicity to the religious systems of the civilized world. 
Their tendency is to substitute edifying facts for unmean- 
ing dogmatisms ; their tendency is to replace meta- 
physical obscurities by luminous truths; and thus to 
confer a great, a lasting, an inestimable benefit upon 
mankind. Knowing that such are the tendencies of this 
institution, and believing that such will be the results, 
I invoke the spirit within its walls, as if it were the 
Alma Mater to which I was indebted for the best 
lessons in wisdom and in virtue; and I say, " Esto 
perpetua" May est thou flourish for everlasting ! 
Mayest thou go on increasing and improving till the 
perceptions of time shall vanish in the consciousness 
of eternity ! Mayest thou, hereafter, send forth tens and 
hundreds, aye, and tens of hundreds, who shall explore 
new regions of knowledge, and open new paths of 
science, who shall be at once the use and the ornament, 
the stay, the help, the solace, the friends, and the bene- 
factors of their country, and of their kind ! 



THE 

RELIGION OF THE UNIVERSE. 



What is Religion ? In the whole circle of human 
enquiry, there is not one question which is more 
important than this ; nor one to which it is more 
difficult to give an answer that will be generally 
satisfactory. 

Without considering in what manner any of 
the existing sects may explain that which they all 
think that they separately possess, or examining 
any of the definitions, in which they do not col- 
lectively agree, I shall state what my own views of 
the subject are ; and what are the great and bene- 
ficial results, to which I think that those views 
would lead, if they were generally embraced. 

I shall not commence what I have to say on the 
subject with a creed ; or with any exposition of my 
own belief respecting the nature of the Deity. It 
appears to me the height of presumption for a 

i 



g 



THE RELIGION OF 



fallible and finite being, like man, to attempt to 
define the nature of the Infinite and the Eternal. 

The nature of such a being must surpass all 
human comprehension. The language of man 
sinks under the difficulties of the subject. How 
can a blind man discriminate colours or define 
light ? But, how much more difficult must it be 
to tell in what the Divine Nature consists, or how 
it is modified ! How can we make the invisible an 
object of sight ? How can we, who can compara- 
tively discern only an atom in space, or a moment 
in time, and whose minds, when most capacious, 
are still very limited in their acquisitions, and 
circumscribed in their views, give any thing like 
an adequate description of the omnipresence, the 
omniscience, and the omnipotence of Deity ? 

If we had faculties of a much higher order than 
we possess, if we knew not only all that takes 
place on this globe, but in all the planets that 
revolve round the sun, we should still know, 
comparatively, nothing of the nature of the 
Omnipotent. The Divine essence would still be 
inscrutable to our minds. 

All that we can know of God must be from his 
agency, as far as it is subject to our scrutiny, or 



THE UNIVERSE. 



3 



open to our view. But what is there in which the 
Divine Agency is not seen, to which it may not be 
traced, or from which it may not be inferred ? 

The works of God are the visible manifestations 
of his attributes. It is in them that we have 
palpable proofs of his agency. Through them we 
discover his laws ; and in them we read his will. 

All the sciences are thus strictly theological. 
They all, more or less, reveal the Divine Being in 
his works. They show us his laws ; and mark 
his mode of agency in •the moral, the intellectual, 
and the material universe. 

Religious knowledge and scientific knowledge 
are thus one and indivisible. Philosophy and 
Theism are identified. 

These notions of religion tend to make it the 
science of sciences ; or to include all sciences in 
one. ' Religion, indeed, considered as the know- 
ledge of God, must necessarily comprehend all 
other sciences. For what science is there, or can 
there be, which has not a reference to God ? 
Science is thus hallowed by its relation to Deity ; 
and theology, instead of being a dull, or repulsive 
study, as it cannot but be, when it consists only 
of formularies and dogmatisms, becomes the most 



4 



THE RELIGION OF 



cheering, elevating, and instructive of all human 
occupations. 

Thus theology, instead of requiring a slavish 
prostration of the understanding, furnishes the 
strongest incitement to the exercise of the mental 
powers. It provides a perpetual employment for 
the noblest faculties of the human mind. 

The desire of knowledge, in order to know more 
of God, is the true devotional state of the mind 
towards him. — Thus devotion, instead of being a 
passive sensation, becomes an active principle. It 
keeps the mind in a state of perpetual activity. — 
The sciences are continually throwing more and 
more light on the perfections of Deity. The more 
we study them, with the knowledge of God for 
our object and end, the more lively must the 
devotional feelings become ; and those feelings 
will not be transient and fugitive, but ever fresh, 
vigorous, and permanent. 

If the sciences are revelations, with a per- 
petually increasing evidence, then, the more they 
are studied, the more must the Divine agency be 
understood. The more must God be known to the 
individual. And the more God is known, the 
more must knowledge of all kinds be diffused ; 



THE UNIVERSE. 



5 



and how can he be worshipped better than in the 
temple of the sciences ? Mjiid is the distinguish- 
ing feature of man. It is that which principally 
marks his high destiny; and points out to him 
the sublime objects, for which he was born, and 
the glorious end for which he is designed. 

God has hitherto been worshipped in ignorance. 
— Religion has been made to consist principally of 
dogmatical assertions ; incapable of proof in them- 
selves ; and of which no proof was supposed to be 
necessary. Authority w T as thought to be sufficient ; 
and that authority was either some text of a book, 
which admitted of different interpretations, or the 
positive determination of some arrogant council, 
or some weak-minded visionary. 

Religion has grown up into a body of assertions 
and opinions, of which no scrutiny was thought 
necessary, and to which a blind assent was re- 
quired. The understanding was to be prostrate 
or paralysed, before the doors of the temple were 
unbarred, and the Divine presence proclaimed. 

But, if religion consist in knowing God, and if 
the knowledge of God comprises every species of 
knowledge, then religion requires the perpetual 
exercise of the understanding. Devotional senti- 



6 



THE RELIGION OF 



ment is thus made to mingle itself with every 
exertion of the mental faculties. 

God is styled by Sir Isaac Newton — Ens entium 
— The Being of Beings. The uncreated and the 
all-creating. But would not Mens mentium be a 
better designation ? It is through mind, that we 
become conscious of his existence. It is through 
the mind we infer that he is. His existence, the 
existence of a Supreme mind, is an inference from 
all that we see, or feel, or think. It is, indeed, a 
conclusion at which we naturally, and, seemingly, 
irresistibly arrive, upon the very first exercise of 
the reasoning faculty on the phenomena of the 
material world. A Divine agency, — an agency, 
in which there are no signs of scantiness of means, 
or limitation of power, is everywhere proclaimed. 
It is so visible, so audible, so perceptible every- 
where, that it is enough to make the deaf hear, 
the dumb speak, and the blind see. 

Hence we find that the religious sentiment is 
universally diffused. No sentiment is indeed so 
universal. Whether man be savage or civilized, 
whether he be in the lowest or the highest grade 
of social life, the sentiment takes possession of his 
mind, and thrills in his heart. In the outward 



THE UNIVERSE. 



7 



expression, indeed, it assumes a multiplicity of 
forms ; and expresses itself in a variety of ways, 
according to the greater or less intellectual ad- 
vancement of the individual. But, in whatever 
external form the sentiment may show itself, what- 
ever voice it may utter, or whatever phrase it may 
assume, the internal feeling is one and the same 
in every human soul. It may have more gran- 
deur of conception, more elevation of view, more 
intellectual sublimity in one than another ; but 
the reality of the sentiment is not affected by the 
diversity of the outward form. 

Where a revelation is made by an individual, 
and even professedly supported by miracles, the 
credibility of it must gradually decrease in the 
course of ages, till it is entirely dissipated and 
destroyed. 

Of those revelations, which, either really or 
professedly, have been supported by a display of 
miraculous agency at the commencement, or for 
a few years after the commencement, it must be 
allowed that, if the miraculous pretensions were 
not fictitious, the proof in favour of the truth of 
any such revelation must be greater at the be- 
ginning than at any subsequent period in the 



8 



THE RELIGION OF 



revolutions of time. Those who see a miracle, have 
an indefinitely stronger evidence of the perform- 
ance, than those who have no knowledge of it 
except from hearsay. The evidence of hearsay, 
indeed, seems hardly sufficient, in any circum- 
stances, to give credibility to a miraculous story ; 
and particularly when it has been a hearsay passing 
through the dark and distorting medium of numer- 
ous generations in hundreds of years. The best 
proof of a miracle must be the ocular self-conscious- 
ness of those who saw it performed ; but this proof 
must be confined to those particular individuals ; 
and, even here, every one is not competent to de- 
termine what are, and what are not, supernatural 
interpositions. Thus, the known incompetency, or 
the uncertain competency, of the first witness, may 
throw doubts about the fact on the very threshold 
of the inquiry. But, whatever may be the com- 
petency of the first witness, it cannot attach itself 
to the hearsay of the second or third in descent ; 
and the credibility of the story must, more or less, 
decrease according to the distance from the primary 
source, or origination of the fact. 

A supernatural interposition requires something 
more than mere human testimony to cause it to be 



THE UNIVERSE. 



9 



believed ; for Hume's argument must occur to the 
mind, that it is more probable that the testimony- 
should be false, than the interposition true. The 
incredibility of the miracle is always greater than 
the credibility of the witnesses. God's work is 
perfect from the beginning. It has no weaknesses, 
no oversights. It does not, like any human scheme, 
require some revision of the plan, or some alteration 
of the parts. Time has no power over the edifice ; 
and no buttresses are ever wanting to strengthen 
the walls ! The principle of the universe, as far as 
respects man, seems to be gradual development and 
steady progression. If there were a supernatural 
revelation, it would require miraculous evidence to 
support it, in every period of its descent through 
the revolutions of time ; for, otherwise, what might 
have been a miracle to the first generation, could 
only become hearsay to the second. Its evidence, 
whatever it might be, would thus become a de- 
creasing series ; and it does not require the fore- 
sight of a conjurer to tell where that will end. 
Every successive generation removes us so much 
farther from the origin of the narrative, and of 
course deducts so much from its credibility. Every 
age takes something from the force of the testi- 



10 



THE RELIGION OF 



mony : so that it is a light that is continually 
going out, till it is finally extinguished. 

But every science is a revelation, with a con- 
tinually increasing evidence. Every day, in an age 
of intellectual advancement, adds to the number of 
the proofs, and the force of the testimony. It is a 
truly divine light, which is susceptible of endless 
increase ; and where can the Divine laws be better 
illustrated, or the Divine agency be better seen ? 

Where a revelation, which lays claim to a super- 
natural origin, is associated with a decreasing evi- 
dence, it bears upon the face of it the certain 
marks of human infirmity and contrivance. 

Progression, without any conceivable limitation 
or end, designates the work of the Eternal. Even 
in his institutions for finite beings, the Infinite 
provides the materials of the imperishable and the 
everlasting. The germ of science, that is rooted 
in the earth, mounts up to the heavens. 

When we trace the sciences from the earliest 
period of historical record, we find a multiplying 
evidence and an increasing light. What is true 
to-day, is not false to-morrow. Theories may vary, 
but facts do not change. One theory may replace 
another ; but the laws of the universe always 



THE UNIVERSE. 



11 



Temain the same. They are the decrees of infinite 
wisdom ; and in that wisdom there can be no 
variableness, or it would not be infinite. 

The revelations of the Divine agency, which the 
sciences gradually unfold, are adapted to the nature 
of the human mind. The human mind, considered 
as that of an individual, or collectively as that of 
an age, or a nation, is slow and gradual in its de- 
velopment. At times it meets with obstructions, 
that seem to prevent its expansion, and to retard 
its growth. But still it is, on the whole, found to 
be progressive in its march, and continual in its 
increase. The augmentation in its ideas, to-day, 
becomes the preparation for a greater increase to- 
morrow. Everv generation makes an intellectual 
advance beyond the preceding. Whatever doubts 
might exist on this subject before the invention 
of printing, there can be no doubt that that art 
has not only accelerated, but perpetuated the in- 
tellectual progression of man. It is the opening 
of a better day on the prospects of the human 
race ; — the dawn of a new era of mental improve- 
ment and intellectual activity. 

The globe which we inhabit, seems only a speck 
in the universe ; but, in the physical formation of 



12 



THE RELIGION OF 



that speck, gradual development and progressive 
improvement seem to have been the law, to which 
from its origin, it was to be subject, and which it 
was through endless ages to obey. 

The earth itself relates its own history. No 
historian ever composed such a narrative of extra- 
ordinary events, or depicted them in such intelligi- 
ble characters. The geological history of the earth 
tells us that there was a period, when there was 
not a living being upon the surface of the globe. 
The primary rocks have not yet been found to con- 
tain a single fossil, or any vestige of animal life. 
The first forms of life that were placed upon the 
habitable globe, seem to have been of the most 
simple kind ; and successive generations of these 
grew up and perished, lived and died, before beings 
of more complicated structure were introduced. 
The scale of being commenced with a simple living 
fibre or tube, like the polypi, with an inherent 
tenacity of life, that does not belong to organiza- 
tions with more instruments of sense, more com- 
plexity of structure, or more extent of powers. 
Lichens, and mosses, and ferns, appear to have been 
among the first specimens of vegetable existence. 

The different strata of the earth are vast pages 



THE UNIVERSE. 



13 



in the geological history of ancient, but unnumbered 
days, which exhibit the recrements of extinct species 
of animated beings, that successively inhabited 
the earth and the ocean ; of which we know that 
they have been, but have ceased to be. Whole 
generations of beings that once were, have perished 
without leaving any living progeny ; and the only 
memorials which they have left of themselves, are 
in their forms or skeletons that have been preserved 
in the ancient stratifications of the globe. 

The progressive improvement in the state of 
the earth, or in that of its inhabitants, which 
geology unfolds, is to me a happy presage, that 
it is an essential principle in the constitution of 
the universe. And what is true with respect to 
the whole, or to the accumulated family of the 
human race, we cannot but believe to be true with 
respect to every individual of the great intel- 
lectual progeny of man. 

Mr. Hume says that we are not to suppose any 
higher attributes than those of which we see the 
proofs before us. But if we can trace, in the works 
of the Creator, a progressive increase of goodness 
towards its objects ; if the great historical records 
of the earth, in the strata of which it is composed, 



14 



THE RELIGION OF 



show that there has been a continued series of 
Divine agency, all indicating a progressive scheme 
of beneficence, slowly but certainly developing 
itself in successive creations of beings, suited to the 
then state of the planet on which they were to exist ; 
and proceeding from life in its most simple form, 
to forms more complicated ; to forms with higher 
functions and a wider sphere of agency, terminating 
in moral and intellectual man ; and that man, in 
the aggregate, rising to a higher and higher state 
of intellectual enjoyment ; increasing the sphere of 
his activity, and enlarging the area of his pleasur- 
able existence : when we see this, are we not justi- 
fied in concluding, and have we not evidence before 
us sufficient to induce us to conclude, that the 
Divine benevolence is exercised in a perpetual, 
but never-ending series of beneficent effects ? 

Infinite Goodness cannot limit its effects. It 
would be contrary to its nature. Finite goodness 
supposes limited means ; but no limitations can be 
ascribed to the bounty of the Infinite. "When he 
gives, his goodness eternizes the gift ; and as he 
does not eternize it here, it furnishes a strong 
ground for believing that he will hereafter. Thus, 
in the succession of states, or in the series of being 



THE UNIVERSE. 



15 



to which every intelligent creature is doomed, it 
is probable that goodness will be perpetually 
increasing towards its object, and without ever 
coming to an end. 

It seems to be the benevolent scheme of the 
Infinite, with respect to his creatures, to make 
a beginning of their being in a low state of 
pleasurable existence ; and by a slow progression, 
or through a series of mysterious and inscrutable 
changes, to advance them to a higher. If the first 
state be the smallest portion of happiness that is 
compatible with a balance of good, it must be recol- 
lected that progressive advancement is the order 
of the universe, or, rather, the design of the great 
Father of the universe. And is not a minimum of 
good, with a perpetual increase, preferable to a 
greater abundance in the first instance, but with- 
out subsequent or endless augmentation? Good 
perpetually increasing, must be preferable to sta- 
tionary good ; even though that good be high in 
the degree of enjoyment and the scale of happi- 
ness. Progressive good seems most in unison with 
the constitution of the world, and with the fond 
desires and natural expectations of man. 

Mr. Hume's argument, that we are not to infer 



16 



THE RELIGION OF 



a greater degree of good than that, of which we 
see the proofs in the present state of things, is 
completely invalidated by the progressive im- 
provement in the moral, the intellectual, and the 
physical condition of man. 

If any one, who lived a thousand years ago, 
had adopted this argument of Hume, and had 
contended that man was never to experience 
more or greater proofs of the Divine Benevolence 
than were at that time visible in the world, he 
would certainly have drawn a wrong conclusion 
from the premises before him, or the phenomena 
which were then open to his view. He would 
have failed to observe that endless progression, 
that perpetuity of movement, which is inherent in 
the constitution of the material and moral world ; 
and which is calculated to produce such wonderful 
changes in the condition of man, in his wants and 
satisfactions, his hopes and fears, his sorrows and 
his joys, and in all the diversified aspects of his 
individual and social state. 

That a new and better order of things is taking 
place in the general state of the world, must, I 
think, be allowed ; but whatever may be our doubts 
on the subject, as it respects the whole habitable 



THE UNIVERSE. 



17 



globe, it is too clear to be denied when we confine 
our attention to any particular country, and more 
particularly to our own, in which, we have a wider 
experience, and where we have better opportunities 
of comparing the present condition with the past. 

How many and how great have been the changes 
in this country, since it was first discovered by the 
Romans ! What a difference between the savage, 
daubed with paint, or covered with skins, and the 
civilized natives of modern times, habited in the 
broadcloth of Leeds or Stroud, or the stuffs of Nor- 
wich, the cottons of Manchester, the silks of Spital- 
fields, or the linens of Belfast ! What a perpetual 
movement onwards to a higher and higher state 
of social order and general happiness ! How many 
victories has science achieved over ills that seemed 
incident to the condition, or inseparable from the 
circumstances of man ! Where are the contagious 
distempers, that depopulated whole cities and dis- 
tricts ? Look at whole countries in such a hi^h 
state of cultivation, that the entire surface appears 
as if it were a richly decorated garden ; and then 
revert to the period when the larger part was 
covered with forests or infested with wolves, when 
the cabins of the peasants were without chimneys 

2 



18 



THE RELIGION OF 



or windows, and when articles of comfort or con- 
venience were wanting in the castles or mansions 
of the great proprietors, which are now to be 
found in the habitations of persons in very humble 
circumstances. The wants of man have, indeed^ 
been multiplied as he has been brought more and 
more within the confines of civilized life ; but 
these very wants have given rise to new modes of 
industry, or to mechanical contrivances, by which 
labour is saved and productions are multiplied. 
To this we may add commerce, with its thousand 
sails, visiting all regions, and bringing home the 
superfluities of all nations. 

The mental change in the state of man, is as 
remarkable as the physical. Books have been 
multiplied as much as other commodities, But if 
we go back only a few hundred years in the his- 
tory of this or the other European states, w r e soon 
arrive at a period when literary pleasures were un- 
known, or were confined only to a small portion 
of the community. Could any one, in the reign 
of Alfred, have anticipated such a change as has 
since taken place in the intellectual condition of 
man in this country, when a degree of knowledge, 
which would then have been reckoned a prodigy,- 



THE UNIVERSE, 



19 



is common even to the laborious classes of the 
people ; and when books are found in the cottages 
of peasants, which would, then, have been a trea- 
sure in the palaces of kings ? 

As man, in the aggregate, is evidently progres- 
sive in civilization, and in all the means of physical 
and mental enjoyment, may we not reasonably hope 
that the same progression, though under other 
forms, and in other states, is attached to every 
individual of the human race ? We see the intel- 
lect of man in the aggregate gradually evolving 
its faculties and developing its strength. Each 
generation makes an addition to the knowledge of 
the preceding, and furnishes the cheering presage 
of unbounded expansion and endless growth. 

The intellect of particular persons, like that of 
man viewed in the aggregate of nations, or in the 
revolutions of thousands of years, seems capable 
of indefinite progression and interminable ad* 
vancement. Every thing transient and finite is 
abhorrent to its nature. It appears, as it were, 
spontaneously and instinctively to excite its re- 
pugnance, and to shock the very essence of its 
being. We have so far a satisfactory reason for 
believing that death is only a change of state, and 



20 



THE RELIGION OF 



not a total destruction of the thread of mental 
consciousness ; the continuity of which will be 
preserved one and unbroken beyond the grave. 

Individuals of elevated thoughts and benevolent 
views may, indeed, rejoice in the prospect of the 
interminable intellectual advancement of which 
their species is susceptible, or to which the human 
race, in the aggregate, is destined ; but this would 
be a poor compensation for not partaking in them- 
selves, of that eternity of progression in mental 
acquisition and intellectual growth, which it is the 
instinctive appetite of the individual to desire, and 
for which the soul is made to sigh. 1 

The intellectual progression of man in the aggre- 
gate, is an incontestable fact. History enables us, 
in some measure, to trace its course, to mark its 
beginning, and to follow it through most of the 
intermediate stages, up to its present advancement. 

In every step of the intellectual advancement of 
man, the Divine agency manifests itself to every 
reflective mind ; though it is at first seen through 
a dark medium, in which ignorance or superstition 

1 Why is the idea of the infinite so strong in the mind of every 
finite intellectual "being, if that idea, which bids us desire the inter- 
minable, is only a delusive chimera, a mere phantom of the brain ? 



THE UNIVERSE. 



21 



distorts the features, perverts the forms, throws 
an unreal terror over the aspect of things, or be- 
wilders the mind in the contemplation. 

The Divine attributes are thus misrepresented, 
the Divine agency traduced. The omnipotence 
of the Deity, which is never for a mdment sepa- 
rated from the direction of infinite goodness, is 
imagined to work evils or to direct atrocities, 
which the human sympathies naturally shudder 
to behold, or at the perpetration of which the 
better reason of man stands aghast. 

But better notions slowly and gradually make 
their way into the mind. The religious sentiment, 
•of which there is in every individual a germ of 
quick growth and exuberant fertility, takes a 
better direction, and associates itself only with that 
idea of the Divine goodness, which makes the love 
of Grod kindle in the breast 

The intellectual improvement of man in the 
aggregate, to the advancement of which no limits 
<;an be assigned, is a strong proof of the Divine 
goodness, and a striking manifestation of the 
Divine agency. If the indefinite unprovability of 
the mind, and its consequent tendency to a never- 
ceasing advancement in knowledge, spring out of 



22 



THE RELIGION OF 



its very nature, to whom, but to the Eternal, can 
we be indebted for so inestimable a gift ? 

There is a principle in the human breast, which 
is perpetually impelling the individual to improve 
his condition ; and which is thus continually adding 
to the stock of social or general good ; for social 
good, in the aggregate, must be composed of the 
portions of good which every individual enjoys. 
And the larger those particular portions are, and 
the fewer exceptions there are to the individual 
possession, the greater must be the aggregate. 

If no limits can be set to the intellectual pro- 
ficiency of man ; if the mind is susceptible of an 
indefinite increase, and yet of so short apparent 
duration ; is there not an irreconcilable incon- 
gruity between the illimitable improvability of 
its nature, and the seeming brevity of its con- 
tinuance? Is not this so far an argument for its 
reviviscence after death ? Does it not at least 
augment the probability ? 

If Mr. Hume, the philosopher, or a philosopher 
like him, had lived at the time of the conquest and 
had embraced the theory that the then present 
degree of human enjoyment considered as consti- 
tuting the proof of the Divine goodness^ formed 



THE UNIVERSE. 



23 



the boundary, beyond which the hopes of ulterior 
good was not to extend, but where the evidence 
of the Divine benevolence was to be reckoned at 
its terminating point, what low and imperfect, but 
happily false notions would he have formed of 
the future destiny of man, and of that scheme of 
Providence which seems to be a gradual, but end- 
less, increase of good to the sentient world ? 

When we contemplate the past changes which 
the earth has undergone, and find that those 
changes have led to a greater and greater develop- 
ment of its productive powers, to increased facili- 
ties and enlarged means for the gratification of 
human wants, and to an indefinite increase in the 
comforts of human life ; and when we consider 
the intellectual progress of man within the last 
three hundred years, and what an influence that 
progress has had on his individual, his social, and 
above all, his political condition ; when we see 
that a period is slowly, but surely, coming, when 
the public good will be the paramount object of 
all human institutions, when the many will no 
longer be pillaged by the few, but when the 
interest of the government will be amalgamated 
with that of the people ; when these things are 



24 



THE RELIGION OF 



brought within the horizon of mental vision, does 
not a new and cheering light dawn upon the mind 
and make us forget the dark and troubled present 
in the luminous serenity of the future ! 

If such be the improved, and continually im- 
proving condition of man in the aggregate, have 
we not so far grounds for believing in a progres- 
sive amelioration in the moral and mentaL being of 
individual man ? For if one generation advances 
in the comforts and conveniences of civilization^ 
and more than all, in the grade of intellectual 
illumination, above the preceding, what actual 
benefit is this to the individual man, who perishes 
without partaking of the progressive changes for 
the better in the state of his species ? 

The man who lived and died after experiencing 
all the wrongs of tyranny in the time of Domitian, 
is but ill compensated for his sufferings by the 
humanity that was practised, or the love of justice 
that prevailed in the time of the Antonines. The 
individual, who existed in the time of the Hep- 
tarchy, when barbarism, murder, and pillage uni- 
versally prevailed, when the majority were in a 
state of villanage, and sold, along with the land„ 
like the cattle in the fields, derived no advantage 



THE UNIVERSE. 



25 



from the more tranquil state, the more pacific 
habits, the more humane sentiments, and the 
greater intellectual advancement of after times. 
Individuals cannot profit by the progressive and 
never-ending ameliorations in the state of their 
species, by the additions that new and better modes, 
or more intellectual and more civilized habits are 
continually making to their stock of happiness, 
unless we suppose that the same progressive im- 
provement belongs to them in some other state, 
which seems inseparably attached to the human 
species in the present world. 

The goodness of God, which shows itself in 
such bright lines and distinct characters in the 
social and intellectual advancement of man in 
the aggregate, leads us to believe that he will 
not refuse similar progressive benefits to indi- 
vidual man. God is not capricious or mutable 
in his regards. It is contrary to his nature, 
It must be contrary to his nature, as " The 
Infinite," to withdraw his protection, or not to 
perpetuate his love. The Infinite in wisdom cannot 
be variable in his purpose. The Infinite in good- 
ness cannot be finite in his gifts. His benevolence, 
agreeably to his nature, must be an interminable 



26 



THE RELIGION OF 



continuity of regard. It can have no interrup- 
tions ; no cessations of existence. His cannot be 
an ephemeral love. Wherever it is bestowed, it 
is, like his nature, everlasting. He, who is an 
object of his love to-day, will not cease to be so 
to-morrow. 

This is a corollary, which pure, unprejudiced 
reason impels us to draw from the very existence 
of a being, eternal in his nature, and infinite in 
his goodness. 

Thus a continuation of life after death follows, 
by a legitimate deduction, from the same con- 
siderations. This great truth, the only solace of 
short-lived and suffering man, is an inference, 
which we -are fully authorised to make from the 
most comprehensive view which we can take of 
the Divine attributes ; considered, in conjunction 
with the natural expectations of man, and the 
moral constitution of the world. 

In most cases duty and interest will be found 
to run in the same line. They will be perceived 
to be coincident ; but there are particular in- 
stances, where duty and interest diverge, or seem 
to diverge ; and where, if they meet again, it can 
only be in that distant future between which and 



THE UNIVERSE. 27 

us an impervious obscurity intervenes. In these 
cases the sense of duty, even in intelligent and 
well constituted minds, is apt to become weak 
and powerless ; and to yield to the transient seduc- 
tions of present gain or pleasure ; or to be rendered 
inoperative by the dread of present pain or incon- 
venience, if it be not intimately interwoven with 
the religious sentiment, and impressed with the 
highest sanction which an undeviating adherence 
to rectitude can receive in the conscious appro- 
bation of the Deity. The feeling of duty, and the 
dictates of conscience, will then be the voice of 
God in the mind. 

The approbation of the Deity is the highest 
sanction which human actions can receive. But 
this sanction can never be satisfactory and com- 
plete without the mental conviction of a future 
existence. For, how can we rationally suppose 
the Deity to approve that, for doing which the 
individual exposes himself to every extremity of 
suffering, or even to an agonising death, unless 
there be a recompense for virtue and goodness in 
a higher sphere ? 

A man loses his life in doing what present in- 
terest dissuades, but a sense of duty demands. Is, 



28 



THE RELIGION OF 



or is not, such, a sacrifice of interest to duty, of 
physical good to moral considerations, acceptable 
to the Deity? Is, or is it not, an object of his 
approbation ? To determine this question in the 
affirmative, is to assent to the moral certainty of a 
future life. For it is in the highest degree con- 
trary to the infinite goodness of the Deity to suffer 
that which is an object of his approbation, to be 
the cause of irremediable wretchedness or hopeless 
suffering to the individual. Hence, there must be 
a reward for the righteous. This life must be an 
antecedent to the one that is to come. 

In all common cases, or in the ordinary tissue 
of human life, duty and interest are one and in- 
divisible ; and may be comprised under the same 
category. But, as in this life there are occasions, 
where they not only do not harmonize, but seem 
utterly discordant, every serious enquirer will 
regard this as one of the strongest intimations of 
a life to come. Where the mind is impressed with 
steady notions of the moral government of the 
Deity, the sufferings of good and wise men in this 
world are a presage of blessedness in that which 
death is to reveal. 

The present life exhibits evident proofs of a 



THE UNIVERSE. 



29 



moral government. In the majority of instances 
there is a marked preference of virtue to vice. 
The gain, even in point of temporal advantage, 
is usually on the side of virtue ; and there can be 
no comparison between them in the balance of 
internal satisfaction. No iniquity of any kind can 
well have the sanction of the heart. It cannot be 
associated with that calm sunshine of the mind, 
which no outward circumstances can either give 
or take away. 

If vice have, in too many instances, the advantage 
over virtue, these exceptions to the general course 
of the moral government of the Deity in the pre- 
sent life, do not negative its existence ; but only 
establish the certainty of its continuance in a life 
to come. The moral government as it is seen 
here, is not that perfect mirror that reflects the 
Divine goodness without a spot or defect ; but 
those spots will vanish, and those defects cease to 
be seen, when the vision of the future is more 
largely opened to the mind. 

The moral government as it exists here, is not 
a perfect work ; but its present apparent imper- 
fection, is an impressive argument for the future 
exaltation of man. AYhat seems, at the first glance, 



30 



THE RELIGION OF 



to produce distrust in the equity of the Divine 
councils, is, when seriously examined, calculated 
to throw the solace of the most cheering hope into 
the mind. For as it is impossible that any imper- 
fect work can proceed from a perfect being, it is 
reasonable to conclude that, if there had been no 
future life to follow this, the moral government 
in this world would have been perfect in every 
particular, and complete in all its parts. Virtue 
would, in all instances, have had the preference to 
vice. The good and the wise, the lovers of truth, 
and the friends to their species, would never have 
been oppressed ; and the ungodly would never 
have flourished like a green bay tree. The moral 
government, as it is at present exercised, is imper- 
fect, because we see only a part of the page instead 
of the whole of the book. 

The many instances of a moral government, 
which we have continually before our eyes in this 
life, establish the fact of its exercise ; and the 
appearances, which lead, or seem to lead, to a 
different conclusion, only serve to excite, and were 
probably intended to excite, the hope of retribu- 
tion in a higher sphere. 

The moral government of the Deity, when con- 



THE UNIVERSE. 



31 



sidered, not only as it is exercised in tlie present 
but as it is relative to the future, cannot have 
any imperfections. It must be without spot or 
blemish. 

Even man, frail and imperfect as he is, aspires 
to perfection. The desire of the perfect seems a 
part of his nature. It is one of his sacred longings 
— one of his anxious aspirations, He sighs after 
a degree of excellence, greater than he can ever 
attain. The ideal of the perfect, of unutterable 
excellence, of inimitable beauty, of impracticable 
goodness, keeps possession of his mind ; and for 
ever precludes a patient acquiescence in any ordi- 
nary moral, or mental acquisitions. 

But, if man desires that which he cannot accom- 
plish, or sighs for a degree of perfection, which he 
can never attain, can we suppose that He, who 
made man susceptible of this desire, can himself 
permit anything imperfect in a system, which has 
a particular reference to this being in whom he has 
implanted such a strong desire for the pure and 
the perfect, for the good and the beautiful ? The 
imperfection, therefore, that occasionally appears 
in the tissue of the moral government of the Deity 
in this present life, must be relative to our gross 



32 



THE RELIGION OF 



conceptions, limited faculties, and circumscribed 
views. 

Some persons are fond of perplexing the ques- 
tion of a future life, by physical or metaphysical 
disquisitions about the possibility of the thing. 
But if moral considerations demonstrate the pro- 
bability of a future state, and indeed if a future 
state be essentially necessary to make the moral 
government of the Deity a perfect whole, and 
to reconcile the proceedings of his government to 
the attribute of Infinite goodness, it matters very 
little whether the thinking principle be a simple 
element, or the result of a complicated mechanism ; 
whether it be a corporeal molecule, or a particle 
of ethereal flame. Whatever it be, if its future 
existence be requisite to, or in unison with, the 
great purposes of the Infinite, his volition can 
perpetuate its duration, or attach the moral and 
mental consciousness of the individual to any 
form or substance in any of the worlds in the 
interminable space. 

The Divine nature is inscrutable. God is a 
Spirit ; but what do we know of a Spirit ? We 
cannot explain it except by negatives. We can 
say that it is not flesh and blood ; that it is 



THE UNIVERSE. 



33 



nothing tangible and material ; nothing that we 
can handle or see ; but what else can we say ? 
ISTegatives explain nothing. They give no posi- 
tive knowledge. They are a mere confession of 
our ignorance. 

Yet there are some creeds that pretend to define 
Deity. And to such a height of presumption do 
they mount, as to proclaim that their definitions 
are the only true, and that all others are false. 

In the theology of old times the Deity is an- 
thropomorphised. The human nature is made the 
counterpart of the Divine. The passions and feel- 
ings, which belong to flesh and blood, are ascribed 
to an incorporeal and simple essence. The infir- 
mities of man are imputed to God ; and the worst 
motives that can actuate the human breast are 
made to influence his conduct and direct his will. 

When all the religion about which men interest 
themselves, or which they think true, is contained 
in a book, and that book is written in a dead lan- 
guage, it necessarily gives rise to a multiplicity of 
interpretations. Every new interpretation, if it 
refer to a matter of any supposed moment, gives 
birth to a new sect. Thus religion itself soon 
becomes entirely made up of dogmatisms and 

3 



34 



THE RELIGION OF 



dogmatists. The adoration of the Deity, instead 
of being placed on the broad basis of universal 
charity, is restricted within the crude notions or 
partial scheme of some narrow-minded sectary. 

A religion of dogmatisms almost necessarily 
becomes a system of intolerance. In vindicating 
their dogmatisms men become positive ; and often 
more positive as the tenets, which they maintain, 
are more uncertain and obscure. Hence intole- 
rance is generated; and the spirit of charity is 
forgotten in the strife of words. Each party 
fights for his opinion, as if his individual honour 
or safety were at stake in the fray. 

If God ever made a supernatural revelation to 
mankind, is it likely that he would make it through 
such an imperfect medium, as human language 
must necessarily be ? It is a medium subject to 
a great diversity of interpretations. It is full of 
ambiguities. The Christian revelation had its 
first exposition in a language that was soon to 
become obsolete ; and when it was transferred to 
tae Greek, or a more universal, and so far less ob- 
jectionable medium, that Greek was deeply colored 
with Oriental idiom; and hence was rendered 
more ambiguous and obscure. If, therefore, we 



THE UNIVERSE. 



35 



suppose the New Testament to contain a Divine 
revelation, we must allow it to be conveyed to 
mankind through a very dark medium ; and so far 
apt to perplex and mislead even men of learning 
and research, as to be totally unfit for a guide to 
the generality of mankind. 

But the revelation which the Deity is con- 
tinually making to mankind through the medium 
of the sciences, is very different from any merely 
verbal communication. It is a revelation through 
the medium of facts. It is a revelation through 
visible and tangible things ; and the light which 
the sciences convey, or which they throw over the 
Divine agency, his laws and government, is not 
weakened or obscured by the progress of time, or 
the revolutions of years. It is, on the contrary, 
a perpetually increasing light. 

In the intellectual history of man, we find a 
progressive development of truths suited to the 
growth of the human faculties, or the cultivation 
of the human mind. The sciences commence with 
a few simple facts or truths in the first instance ; 
but these are perpetually increased by fresh aug- 
mentations. New matter is unceasingly added to 
the old. Old truths are followed by truths more 



36 THE RELIGION OF 

luminous, instructive, and wonderful. If the first 
known truth in electricity were that amber will 
attract a straw, how many were the intermediate 
discoveries till we arriyed at the period, when 
Franklin drew lightning from the clouds ; or when 
the muscular motions of a dead body were excited 
by a trough with a series of plates of two different 
metals and an interyening acid ? 

In astronomy what a development has there been 
in the course of ages of the Divine agency and 
laws, from the period when the earth was sup- 
posed to be a flat surface, and the sky a solid fir- 
mament, to the time when Jupiter was discovered 
to have four moons, and Saturn to be surrounded 
by a luminous ring ? The successive discoveries in 
astronomical science from the times of Galileo to 
those of Herschel, or since the invention of the 
telescope, have been a continually increasing dis- 
play of the Divine agency ; of the infinite wisdom 
and power of the Great First Cause, of the most 
impressive kind ; and exciting emotions of the 
most profound reverence and the most lively ad- 
miration. Two instruments of no very ancient 
invention, and the power of which has been won- 
derfully increased by recent improvements, show 



THE UNIVERSE. 



37 



us " The Infinite" in the minima and the maxima ; 
of the maxima in the innumerable millions of 
worlds and system of worlds in the unbounded 
ethereal space ; and of the minima in the myriads 
of organized forms that even a drop of water is 
known to contain. 

Thus the Deity gradually reveals his agency to 
the human mind ; and causes the intellectual 
faculties of the creature to co-operate in manifest- 
ing the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Great 
Creator. 

Religion as it is commonly taught in the form 
of mystic creeds and unmeaning dogmatisms, 
tends to check inquiry ; to make the mind torpid ; 
and to retard the growth of the intellectual 
faculties. 

Indeed religion itself is often made to consist 
in a blind acquiescence in the positive assertions 
or authoritative mandates of priests or councils. 
He, who approaches the altar, is required to pros- 
trate his understanding at the feet of the officiat- 
ing minister. 

But the religion which it is the object of this 
work to inculcate, tends to elevate the thoughts, 
and to give vigour to the understanding, by the 



38 



THE RELIGION OF 



constant and unremitting exercise of the mental 
powers. For as God is the origin, the beginning 
and the end of all wisdom, we cannot make any 
advances in that religion, which essentially con- 
sists in the knowledge of God, without constantly 
exercising those intellectual faculties by which 
alone that knowledge is to be acquired. 

If, therefore, we wish to make a daily advance 
in religion, we must make a daily addition to that 
knowledge through which alone the Divine agency 
is manifested and the Divine attributes known. 
The more we cultivate the mind, the more God 
will reveal himself to us. 

And when the main object of all intellectual 
cultivation is to increase the knowledge of the 
Divine agency and attributes, or in other words to 
know God more and more, the true devotional 
sentiment must be more excited in our hearts, 
in proportion as there is more knowledge in our 
minds. 

When religion is thus taught, and made the 
trunk of all the sciences, the reign of popular 
superstition must come to an end. For the basis 
of that superstition is ignorance. Credulity is 
always in proportion to the ignorance of the means 



THE UNIVERSE. 



39 



by which effects are produced, and by which the 
Divine agency is manifested in the material, the 
moral, and the intellectual universe. 

"When religion is confined exclusively to a book, 
written in a dead language, and in an idiom very 
different from the vernacular, it must be liable to 
a multiplicity of erroneous conclusions, and a 
diversity of conflicting opinions ; but these incon- 
veniences are, in a great degree, avoided, when 
the light, which is to illuminate the inquiry, and 
to develope the Divine agency to the mind, is 
sought in the great book of the universe. Here 
certain facts, and not doubtful words, become the 
basis of opinions. The laws of the material world 
are employed to show the wisdom and goodness of 
the Deity. Religion thus becomes identified with 
knowledge ; and the mind, instead of being pros- 
trated to the earth by the terrors of sacerdotal 
creation, or under the influence of a malignant 
superstition, is elevated to the heavens, where it 
beholds the good and the beautiful in all the 
works of the Eternal. 

The devotional feelings of the heart are purified 
in their nature, and enlarged in their area of sym- 
pathetic influence, as all nature contributes to 



40 



THE RELIGION OF 



increase the number of objects in which the Divine 
attributes are strikingly exemplified, or the Divine 
agency luminously displayed. 

Religion thus explained, becomes something so 
simple and definite, that the mind cannot well be 
mystified on the subject. Clear ideas are substi- 
tuted for verbal ambiguities. The logomachies of 
divines, that do nothing but bewilder the mind, 
are laid aside for those truths which, while they 
add to that knowledge in which pleasure and use- 
fulness are combined, enlarge the views of creation 
and elevate our conceptions of the Creator. 

He who, in religion, keeps constantly in view 
this great truth that u Deuni scire est nihil 
nescire," will find his ardour in the acquisition of 
knowledge perpetually excited by the conscious- 
ness that every new step in his intellectual ad- 
vance, is a nearer approximation to the Deity. As 
all the sciences are theological, they have two 
great objects in view ; the knowledge of God and 
the benefit of man ; the development of the Divine 
agency, and the solace and sustenance of human 
life, both physical and intellectual. 

As religion and science, according to my notions, 
are identical, religion in this view of it consists of 



THE UNIVERSE. 



41 



an infinite series of truths ; moral, physical, and 
metaphysical ; only a comparatively small portion 
of which is at present within the grasp of the 
human understanding ; but of which we may 
reasonably conjecture that more and more will be 
developed in every succeeding state of existence. 
But in that indefinite portion of those truths, which 
man is now permitted to know, enough of the 
Divine agency is manifested to excite his reverence 
and admiration. The design of the All-good and 
the All-wise evidently is to exercise the human 
faculties in the knowledge of himself. Day and 
night they should be employed in the acquisition of 
that knowledge ; for what can contribute so much 
to our own increase in wisdom and goodness ? 
The clearer insight which individuals obtain into 
the scheme of the Divine agency in the develop- 
ment of the sciences, the more will the means of 
real enjoyment and true happiness, both mental 
and physical, be in their power. 

By making the exercise of religion to consist in 
incessant mental cultivation, in order to bring more 
and more of the Divine perfections within the view 
of the mind, we exalt the human nature in the only 
way in which it can be raised above its natural 



42 



THE RELIGION OF 



level, to a higher and higher degree of moral and 
intellectual excellence. 

We do not attempt to give it a false lustre or an 
imaginary elevation, by artificial distinctions, or 
exclusive privileges ; but to illuminate it more 
and more with that Divine light, which, more than 
any thing else, purifies the heart and improves the 
understanding. 

To make religion consist in the knowledge of 
Grod, to consider that knowledge as comprehending 
the whole circle of the sciences, and to make the 
acquisition of greater and greater degrees of it our 
daily study, and the highest object of all our efforts 
and desires, must be to make continual advances 
in happiness. For must not that knowledge which 
makes us better acquainted with the Divine agency 
or with those laws by which all motion is regulated 
and all terrestrial nature governed, make us more 
accurately acquainted with the efficient causes of 
our weal or woe ? 

When, then, religion and science shall be inti- 
mately identified, and all knowledge considered as 
theological in its origin and its relations, the happy 
union will soon be found to be productive of incal- 
culable benefits in the social and political state of 



THE UNIVERSE. 



43 



men. The aristocracy of wealth will be humbled ; 
the distinctions of rich and poor will be less re- 
garded than those of wise and foolish. The aris- 
tocracy of rank, or artificial political position, will 
be in lower estimation than that of intellectual 
advancement. The nearest position to the throne 
of kings will be less coveted than a close approxi- 
mation to the sanctuary of that theological wis- 
dom, in which alone all mental glory resides, and 
from which all useful truths proceed. 

The true and only permanent aristocracy among 
men is that of intellectual proficiency. The grades 
of that proficiency are many and various. Some 
possess higher degrees, and others greater varieties 
of knowledge ; but whether the distinction be in the 
highest degree of the same kind, or in the greatest 
diversity of different kinds, it constitutes the only 
real superiority in the scale of rational consideration. 

When knowledge is identified with religion, or 
rather when all knowledge is considered as strictly 
theological, and when of course, theology is viewed 
as embracing the whole circle of the sciences, and 
every science is studied as a means of revealing the 
Divine agency, religion and goodness will be 
inseparable companions. For men, having this 



44 



THE RELIGION OF 



noble pursuit, and being thus lifted up in the 
intellectual scale, will be raised above those grosser 
pleasures, and those baser pursuits, in which moral 
degradation principally resides, or from the desire 
of which it springs. To know one's duty indeed, 
is not always to practise it ; but to have such an 
enlightened view of it as to know that the perform- 
ance is the most certain means, and the most 
permanent constituent of happiness, is to be fur- 
nished with the strongest motion for the perform- 
ance ; and must so far tend to make virtue a steady 
object of pursuit, All men invariably seek their 
own greatest good ; and when theology, which, 
rightly viewed, is the knowledge of that as well as 
other things, gives us a thorough insight into the 
materials of which the greatest good consists, or 
into the constituents of true happiness, the desire 
to obtain it must be proportionally vivid, and the 
effort proportionally strong. 

AYhen religion is made to consist in observing a 
certain day, or going to a certain church, or re- 
peating a certain form of words, such religion tends 
neither to elevate the mind, nor to improve the 
conduct ; neither to enlarge the circle of the gene- 
rous and tender sympathies, nor to quicken the 



THE UNIVERSE. 



45 



sense of moral obligation. It has rather a tendency 
to render the understanding dull and sluggish ; to 
paralyze its activity under the chilling influence of 
certain rigid dogmatisms ; and to make certain 
solemn forms and periodical observances, a sub- 
stitute for truth, justice, and humanity. Such a 
religion cannot be favourable either to mental or 
to moral improvement. It must degenerate into 
stupid and stupefying forms. Superstition must be 
its handmaid ; and immorality one of its results. 

The only use which some religionists make of 
their understanding is to perplex it by inquiring 
into the nature of Grod. They leave the easy and 
feasible to attempt the impossible. They forsake 
the clear and the simple to lose themselves in a 
region of clouds and darkness. For how can the 
finite hope to comprehend the infinite, the ma- 
terial the spiritual, the temporal the eternal ? 
God can be known only in his works. There his 
agency is seen ; there his will may be traced ; 
there his laws be developed. But, what his 
nature is, or how he exists, must ever be past 
finding out. It is enough for us to know that he 
exists ; but hoic he exists, it is vain, and indeed 
presumptuous to inquire. 



46 



THE RELIGION OF 



But yet there are creeds which, not only affect to 
define the Divine nature, and to explain the mode 
in which it exists, but go still farther, and even pre- 
sume to hurl the thunderbolt of Divine vengeance 
on those who refuse to assent to the definition. 

Though it is certain that belief is not an optional 
thing, yet these divines act not only as if it were 
optional, but entirely within their absolute juris- 
diction. 

Every religious teacher goes out of his province 
when he attempts to define the Divine nature ; or 
to prescribe to his fellow-mortals what they should 
believe or not believe concerning it, as if the 
Eternal would punish men for their opinions. 
Yet what else do we hear from the pulpits of the 
present day, but matters of opinion represented as 
things of paramount importance ; and the mere 
dogmatisms of erring priests insisted on as the 
determinations of an infallible intelligence ? 

Religion in general is made too much of a period- 
ical service ; an occasional thing. It is a dress 
to be worn only on particular occasions. It is made 
for solemn ceremonials or consecrated feasts. But 
the religion, which this work teaches, constitutes 
the whole business of life, both speculative and 



THE UNIVERSE. 



47 



practical. It is not an occasional, but an every day 
concern. It is not merely a sabbatical observance. 
It does not merely occupy one day in seven ; but it 
engrosses the whole seven. The Deity whom the 
true religionist worships, is the God of every day ; 
and of every hour in the day ; and of every mo- 
ment in the hour. There is no portion of time 
which is not his ; and which the Religion of the 
Universe does not consecrate to him. The uni- 
versality of his presence is the never-ceasing con- 
sciousness of the mind. What the Religion of the 
Universe exacts from its votaries is a perpetual 
thought of the Divine superintendence. That hal- 
lowed sentiment belongs to all states of the truly 
religious mind. It is with it in joy and in sorrow ; 
in sickness and in health ; in the adverse and the 
prosperous hour ; at home and abroad ; when we 
travel and when we rest ; when we traverse the 
streets of a busy city, and when we pace the seques- 
tered path, of the quiet fields. The religionist who 
sees Grod in everything and beholds everywhere 
the traces of his wisdom and goodness, cannot go 
anywhere where the Divine agency does not meet 
his view ; — where it does not excite his thoughts, 
engage his sympathies or hallow his meditations. 



48 



THE RELIGION OF 



The Religion of the Universe substitutes the 
catechism of nature, or rather of nature's works, 
for the catechism of opinions. Hence it requires 
no time to be wasted in polemical discussions. 
It leaves dogmatisms for facts ; and they are facts 
which enlarge the stock of knowledge, and extend 
the boundaries of thought ; instead of being mere 
logomachies which excite strife, multiply dissen- 
sions and engender hate. 

Religion has hitherto been but too much and 
too long perverted to bad purposes and immoral 
ends. It has been made to throw the most in- 
superable impediments in the way of intellectual 
advancement. It has actually been employed to 
stunt the growth of the understanding. It has 
made many of the most important truths questions 
of authority rather than of reason. It discards 
reason in matters of belief; and it demands an 
assent to the most complicated mysticisms, without 
any knowledge of their meaning, or any evidence 
of their truth. Thus religion, which should most 
exalt and energize the human mind, has been 
made the instrument of degrading its nature and 
paralyzing its powers. 

If one thing be more fitted than another to 



THE UNIVERSE. 



49 



elevate the views of man, and to quicken and in- 
vigorate all the better faculties of the mind, it is 
the contemplation of Deity, or the Divine agency, 
in all the diversified phenomena of the universe. 
Indeed, religion is rather a mischief than a benefit, 
rather a curse than a blessing, if it is not made to 
contribute to the intellectual improvement of man ; 
but to make it, in its operations, both speculative 
and practical, auxiliary to that improvement, is to 
apply it to its best purposes and its noblest ends. 

If religion is "Deum scire," and if "Deum 
scire" is " nihil nescire," two things are clear: 
first, that man can never know Grod to perfection, 
for that would be to partake of his omniscience ; 
and secondly, that religion requires a perpetually 
increasing proficiency in that knowledge, that we 
may every day comprehend more and more of the 
Divine agency in its varied manifestations in the 
present system of things. This is the only way in 
which the devotional principle, that seems inherent 
in the nature of man, can be exercised in due sub- 
ordination to the rational ; and in which all the best 
feelings of the heart can be brought into unison 
with the highest activity of the understanding. 
In religion, the mind finite aspires to know more 



THE RELIGION OF 



and more of the Mind Infinite. This is the great 
object for which we ought to live ; and which we 
hope to prosecute in another state, when we seem 
to die. 

We can know an invisible entity only by its out- 
ward operations. Those powers or beings, by which 
the greatest effects are produced, are not objects 
of sense. They are neither palpable to the touch, 
nor visible to the sight, except in their effects. 

Gravitation itself, a power which has no limits, 
but acts through infinite space, is neither an object 
of sight nor touch. Its agency is most surprising ; 
but it eludes the keenest sense. What it is, no one 
knows ; but that it is, how can we help believing ? 

The human mind itself is not an object of sight. 
What we know of it, we know only by its agency. 
We see it only in its effects. The great and mighty 
minds of Bacon, Shakspeare, and Milton, were not 
objects of sight : their gigantic intellectual powers 
could be discerned only in their works. The 
Novum Organum furnishes incontestable proof 
that it was the production of an unseen, thinking 
entity, that had made itself master of all that was 
known up to that time, and presaged what was 
likely to be known in time to come. 



THE UNIVERSE. 



51 



The plays of Lear, Hamlet, Othello, and Mac- 
beth sufficiently demonstrate the superior mind 
that had its dwelling in the body of the great dra- 
matist. They make it an object of our conscious- 
ness. We become certain that the invisible faculty 
called mind, could alone do what he has done. 

In the Paradise Lost, the towering mind of 
Milton is resplendent to the sight. The visible 
proves the invisible. The works of Bacon, Shak- 
speare, Milton, bear an infallible testimony to the 
thinking entity, that inhabited their corporeal 
organization. Here we touch the impalpable, 
and see the unseen. 

The earth is full of revelations of the Divine 
agency, the successive manifestation of which seems 
to have a relation to the growth of the human 
faculties ; and to be admirably adapted to the 
encouragement of their exercise, and consequently 
of their continually-increasing improvement. The 
physical history of the world, considered in con- 
junction with the mental history of the human 
race, sufficiently proves this. The progressive 
development of the sciences, keeping pace with 
the intellectual advancement of man, displays such 
proofs of the Divine agency as are constantly 



52 



THE RELIGION OF 



increasing in number and importance, tending to 
promote the highest interests of civilization, and 
to confer the most permanent and most extensive 
benefits on man. 

Hence we see how true religion and science 
are conjoined, and, indeed, must for ever remain 
inseparably united, as far as religion consists in 
knowing God ; and to make it consist in any 
thing else, is to ally it with ignorance, or to asso- 
ciate it with the mere trumpery of priestcraft and 
superstition. 

If religion consists in knowing God, and if the 
sciences, in their successive development, constitute 
an essential part of that knowledge, as they furnish 
the most striking evidence of the Divine agency, 
it follows that the all-important knowledge which 
they contain, and the invaluable truths which they 
disclose, ought as much as possible to be popular- 
ized. Hence the religious teachers of the state 
ought to be men of high scientific attainments, who 
have made great advances in knowledge themselves, 
and are capable of explaining what they know. 

The sciences are the only true revelations of 
Deity; and to make those revelations generally 
known to the people, would, in a better state of 



THE UNIVERSE. 



53 



political advancement, be the constant occupation 
and exclusive duty of the ministers of the Estab- 
lishment. That Establishment would thus become 
the sanctuary of science ; and every sect or party 
under heaven, whether Jew, Christian, Turk, or of 
any other faith or nation, being deeply interested 
in the truths which it would be its business to 
teach would cheerfully contribute to its support. 
This is the only way of making a truly universal 
church, or of reconciling religion with all the best 
interests of the human race. 

When religion was once identified with science, 
as it must be if it consists in knowing God, it 
would soon constitute, not only the noblest pursuit, 
but the highest gratification of man. It would be 
his nightly meditation and his morning theme. 

The earth is its own historian. It makes known 
its origin ; it shows the power to which it owed its 
birth, and which has watched over it in all its suc- 
cessive changes and revolutions. Geological science 
furnishes visible and palpable evidence that what is 
earth has been ocean, and what is ocean has been 
earth ; and that these changes have occurred in a 
countless series, in the dark backward and abysm 
of time. Races of animals have existed that are no 



54 



THE RELIGION OF 



longer seen ; tribes of reptiles and vegetables have 
been that are no more ; innumerable races of 
organized and sentient beings have been, and have 
ceased to be, before, under the wise appointment 
of the Divine agency, man reared his head upon 
the earth. 

When certain revolutions on the surface, or in 
the solid substance of the globe, had been going on 
for myriads of ages, till the earth had become fit for 
the habitation of man, man was seen upon the earth. 
Whether his existence was owing to the immediate 
volition of the Deity, or was the effect of second 
causes coming to a certain point in the series, 
where the Eternal had ordained the human race 
to appear, the Divine agency is equally manifested. 
Everything is equally referred to Omnipotence. 

" These are thy glorious works, Parent of Good — 
Almighty !" 

Greology shows us clearly that the Deity does 
not effect all things at once by immediate fiats, or 
simultaneous volitions ; but that he makes use of 
time in his diversified works and varied schemes of 
creative power. In the great, as well as in the 
small, the maxima, as well as the minima, of his 
providential arrangements, there seems to be a 



THE UNIVERSE. 



55 



gradual development of his agency. The acorn 
slowly develops itself into the oak ; the child into 
the man. Here we see a gradual accretion of parts, 
a tacit and almost imperceptible development of 
the physical and mental powers. 

In the structure of the habitable globe, one 
display of creative power, if I may so say, has 
followed another in a countless series of effects ! 
and every new development had a reference to the 
succeeding, through millions of years, and amid 
innumerable manifestations of the Divine agency 
in every stage of the process. 

The first crop of lichens, that could scarcely be 
seen upon the rock, prepared the way for the 
accumulation of soil that was to feed myriads of 
organized beings, before it furnished sustenance 
for the human race. If creation be represented 
as a pyramid, with innumerable stratifications of 
diversified matter and innumerable swarms of 
sentient beings of every size and form, the apex 
must be considered as terminating in reasoning 
man. 

How could the teachers of religion, amongst 
their other duties, be occasionally so well employed 
as in popularizing some of the most important 



56 



THE RELIGION OF 



geological truths, and bringing them within the 
reach of any common understanding ! This is the 
great book of Genesis, which it behoves a religious 
teacher primarily to explain. This is the great 
volume in which every passage contains the most 
lucid proofs of Divine agency and providential care ; 
the most striking and impressive exhibitions of a 
power bringing order out of confusion, light out 
of darkness, serenity out of disturbance, fruitful- 
ness out of sterility, life out of death, and peace, 
and joy, and harmony, and physical, and intel- 
lectual delight of all kinds, out of the strife of 
elements, the explosions of volcanoes, the concus- 
sions of earthquakes, the inundations of water 
and the ravages of fire. 

The truths of geological science are not above 
the level of the most ordinary apprehension ; and 
as they may be made visible to the eye and pal- 
pable to the sense, none can be better calculated 
to impress the great truth of a never-ceasing, 
never- absent, never- failing Divine agency upon 
the mind. 

Geological science proves to demonstration that 
God makes use of ages, perhaps of millions of years, 
to produce effects that one simple instantaneous 



THE UNIVERSE. 



57 



fiat might effect. Hence we learn that there is 
a slow and successive development in the schemes 
of his providence ; and hence a hope is excited, a 
vrvid and animating hope, that this is his mode of 
dealing with individual man ; and that it is the 
way in which he rears the higher faculties of his 
nature for an interminable growth — an eternity of 
increase. For, if progression be a part of the 
great scheme, if it be the principle on which the 
providential government of the world rests, and by 
which it is to be ultimately perfected, it must 
belong to the parts as well as to the whole ; and 
man in the individual, as well as man in the 
aggregate, must partake of this successive develop- 
ment of power and goodness, which is included in 
the infinite system of the Divine administration ; 
and of course must have a perpetually increasing 
perception of the Divine agency in the continual 
increase of his happiness, in his transition from 
one state to a higher, in his ascent from the 
perishable to the undying, from the transitory to 
the everlasting. 

Many important truths in astronomy are not 
above common apprehension ; and they might be 
so explained as to excite, in the highest degree,. 



58 



THE RELIGION OF 



wonder and admiration, and all those feelings 
which give force and intensity to the devotional 
sentiment. 

It is of great importance to impress the idea of 
the Infinite on common minds ; and what can be 
so well calculated to produce this effect as the 
objects about which astronomy is conversant ? 

The magnitude, the grandeur, the distance, the 
endless variety of the objects, — all tend to exalt 
the sentiments of the individual, and to impress 
a reverential consciousness of the Infinite on the 
soul. 

The great truths of astronomy are well calcu- 
lated to excite these feelings in every mind. "When 
the Religion of the Universe is substituted for the 
systems of supernatural marvels and metaphysical 
dogmatisms, it will behove the government to 
furnish every parish with telescopes of sufficient 
power to give a correct view of the rugged surface 
of the moon; to exhibit the moons of Jupiter, 
and the ring of Saturn, if not some of the nebulae 
and double stars. No man can well behold these 
celestial phenomena without sentiments of wonder 
and adoration. A profound consciousness of the 
Divine agency would thus be impressed upon the 



THE UNIVERSE. 



59 



minds even of the peasantry, much beyond what the 
perusal of any chapter whatever in the Bible, or 
any catechetical formularies in the book of Com- 
mon Prayer could produce. Whenever the poorest 
peasant in the kingdom is sufficiently instructed 
to know that though light travels at the rate of 
192,000 miles in a second of time, or nearly twelve 
millions of miles in a minute, there are stars so 
distant that their light, though moving with, this 
incredible velocity, has not yet reached the earth, 
must not a feeling of devotional reverence take 
possession of the mind ? And as this feeling would 
be connected with a knowledge of the Divine agency 
in some of its most wonderful manifestations, it 
would not prostrate but elevate the understanding. 
A religion that prostrates the understanding, or 
which requires such prostration, is far from being 
a religion in unison with the Religion of the 
Universe; it is rather entirely opposed to it in 
its spirit and effects. 

The Religion of the Universe consisting in the 
knowledge of God, and that knowledge embracing 
all the sciences, and comprehending every mani- 
festation of the Divine agency which can be an 
object of mental perception in the whole scheme 



60 



THE RELIGION OF 



of things, must be perpetually giving more light 
to the mind, and more exercise, and consequently 
more strength to the understanding. Instead of 
humiliating, it must exalt the reflective powers ; 
instead of making the mind prostrate, it must 
cause it to be more erect. Instead of producing 
intellectual imbecility and lassitude, it must inspire 
double vigour and activity. 

Let the people be only duly taught that religion 
consists in knowing and loving God, and that such 
knowledge and love can be obtained only by the 
study of his agency in the moral and material 
world ; let some of the innumerable manifestations 
of this agency be clearly explained so as to be 
brought within the sphere of general apprehension ; 
then the most important truths will soon be popu- 
larised, and the strongest possible impulse given 
to the intellectual advancement of the human race. 

The light, dim and feeble, unsteady and flicker- 
ing, of all the existing superstitions, or, as they 
are called, revelations, is gradually going out, while 
a better light, a light more serene, diffusive, con- 
sistent, and exhilarating, — the light of science, the 
true religious light, is coming in ; and will finally 
find an ingress into every human mind till the 



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61 



earth becomes full of the knowledge of the Lord 
as the waters cover the sea. 

The religion which is calculated to excite the 
devotional feelings of all intellectual beings, and 
which is alone worthy of their acceptation as a true 
and resplendent mirror of the Divine agency, in all 
its diversified manifestations, must be taken from 
the book of the universe. This book is composed 
of pages, as solid as the rocks and as bright as the 
stars. It is a volume of infinite magnitude, con- 
sisting of earths, and oceans, of planets and suns, 
of clusters of stars, and of nebulae including mil- 
lions of systems. It is a book which all may read, 
and which all may profit by reading ; but of which 
we could never know the whole contents, nor come 
to the last chapter, though it should be read for 
ever and ever. "Deum scire est nihil nescire." 

The religious sentiments of all ranks and con- 
ditions must be exalted by being taught, that 
though our earth and moon, with the other planets 
and the central sun, constitute one system, yet 
that this system, vast as it seems, and vast as it 
really is, compared with our finite notions, is only 
one of myriads, or rather millions of systems of 
similar or greater extent. What does the book 



62 



THE RELIGION OF 



which states the sun and moon to have been 
created for the convenience of the earth alone, and 
which puts the stars in a parenthesis, tell us of 
this ? And yet this is what God bids us know, 
urges us not to rest without knowing ; else, why 
did he give us an idea of the Infinite, and make 
it an object of desire ? 

The salutary influence which the perpetual 
inculcation of these truths would have upon the 
mind and heart, woidd soon be found superior to 
that which any dogmatisms of the old supersti- 
tions have ever produced. A new, more moral, 
orderly, and enlightened race of beings, would, in 
the course of a few years, be seen upon the earth. 
The belief of the marvellous would gradually 
cease ; but a belief of a more rational kind would 
soon rise up in its place. The firm conviction of 
the universal presence of the Deity, and of his per- 
petual agency, showing itself in successive manifes- 
tations, according to the intellectual expansion and 
mental growth of the human race, would supersede 
the imaginary necessity, and consequently banish 
the belief, of supernatural interpositions. 

If the Divine presence were ever withdrawn from 
any portion of the universe, must not a chaotic 



THE UNIVERSE. 



63 



confusion ensue ? All things, all worlds and sys- 
tems, scattered through, infinite space, rest upon 
that support. They can haye no other. For what 
but the Infinite and the Eternal can maintain the 
limited in space and the circumscribed in time? 
Where the Divine agency is always present and 
operative, it necessarily excludes the necessity 
of marvellous interpositions. Such interpositions 
could only be required to correct some error or 
remove some defect ; but where there is a never- 
ceasing presence and an unintermitted agency of 
the Infinite and Eternal, is it not impiety to 
suppose the possibility of error or defect ? Is it 
not absurd to adopt the hypothesis of marvellous 
interventions or extraordinary revelations ? 

The Divine mind is continually revealing itself 
to the finite in all the varied phenomena of the 
existing universe. The more these phenomena are 
the subjects of observation, and the objects of rea- 
son, the more will the consciousness of the Divine 
presence be impressed ; and the more the evidence 
of the never-ceasing Divine agency be increased. 
A belief in miracles always supposes an unstable 
and vacillating belief in the perfections of the 
Deity. It is a credulity originating either in 



64 



THE RELIGION OF 



scanty knowledge or in blind ignorance. The 
Religion of the Universe teaches better things. 

God never mends his work. It is perfect 
throughout from the beginning to the end. It 
requires no afterthought in the contrivance, no 
subsequent variation of the means in the comple- 
tion of the scheme. All such things denote the 
ignorance or the infirmity of the human architect ; 
and are quite incompatible with the unerring 
wisdom of the Divine. The great scheme of 
Providence is marked by endless continuity of pro- 
gression ; and all the interventions of miraculous 
agency are excluded from the plans of omniscience. 

Whenever the clergy shall cease to be the 
dogmatical assertors of a belief in mystic creeds 
and marvellous legends, and shall adopt the great 
truth that religion consists in knowing God, and 
that God can be known only in his works, the 
doctrines which the best interests of humanity 
would then require them to teach, would popu- 
larise the most important truths, and bring the 
most useful portions of all the sciences within the 
sphere of common understandings. 

Every week would then make some addition to 
the knowledge of the people. Their intellectual 



THE UNIVERSE. 



65 



advancement would be unceasing. The church 
would then truly be a watch-tower of light. 
Darkness, in the mantle of religion, would no more 
cover the land. The spectres of superstition would 
gradually vanish before the light of a better day. 
Mental light would produce, or tend to produce, 
moral purity. Morality, instead of being taught 
on the footing of authority, or inculcated as matter 
of church or scripture precept, 1 would be put on its 
true footing, — the general good of society, and the 
particular good of the individual. 

Social good and individual good do not run in 
opposite lines, but in the Same. They are, in fact, 
when rightly considered, inseparably united. 

When, therefore, morality is rightly taught, the 
fears of hell and the hopes of heaven will not be 
required to enforce moral laws. Moral obligation 
is the obligation to do that which conduces to our 
own good without impairing that of the society to 
which we belong. Social good is made up of 

1 "Why," asks Luther (Cat. Major, 4, 18), "should more 
reverence be paid to parents, whose flesh and bones differ not from 
those of Turks and heathens, than to others? When, however," 
he adds, " we hear the precept, honour thy father and thy mother, 
the case becomes altogether different ; here is the true reason why 
this flesh and blood are to be honoured." 



66 



THE RELIGION OF 



individual good ; but though the good of one 
individual may appear in opposition to that of 
another, social good, which is the good of all, 
requires that one individual should not be injured 
for the sake of benefitting another ; but that the 
good of all should, as much as possible, be 
equalized. 

The common welfare is to be the rule for the 
whole ; and, as far as it is compatible with that, 
regard is to be had to the good of every particular 
individual. 

The great principles, on obedience to which the 
common welfare depends, are truth and justice. 
The observance of truth is necessary to the due 
administration of justice ; for judicial proceedings 
must be more or less questions of evidence; and 
what would be the value of testimony in a society 
in which there was no respect for truth ? A society 
of liars would contain in itself the elements of its 
own dissolution. Without some respect for the 
sanctity of truth, the parts of the social fabric 
could not cohere. They would be too discordant 
to unite, or to form one solid whole. 

Truth not only constitutes the strength, but the 
delight of the social scheme. That converse is 



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67 



most pleasurable, where the heart and the lips are 
known to correspond; and where treachery, dis- 
simulation, and insincerity are unknown. 

Justice has reference to the distinctions of meum 
and tuum; or, in other words, to the rights of 
property ; a respect for which is requisite, not 
only for the peace, but for the very existence of 
society. 

Whatever is in opposition to truth and justice, 
so far endangers the social fabric ; and, of course, 
so much of the welfare of individuals as depends 
on the stability of the social scheme. 

As there are certain virtues, particularly truth 
and justice, which are essential to the very exist- 
ence of society, and on the greater or less practice 
of which, the sum of social happiness which any 
community enjoys, must necessarily depend ; and 
as God has made the nature of man social, and 
consequently made society the vital principle of 
his pleasurable existence ; it follows that truth and 
justice, and those virtues without which the social 
structure must fall to pieces, are an ordinance of 
the Deity. His will as clearly and imperatively 
enjoins their practice, as if the commandment 
were written in the heavens over our heads. 



68 



THE RELIGION OF 



Whatever produces the greatest sum of physical 
enjoyment compatible with health, and not adverse 
to moral satisfaction, may reasonably be the pursuit 
of individual man. The preservation of health is 
incompatible with intemperance, or any inordinate 
gratification. The effect of one act may not 
be perceptible ; but the frequent repetition of the 
act will certainly bring on a large mass of misery. 
Excess of indulgence in any of the appetites is 
and must be injury ; and the injury, which shows 
the excess, dictates the prohibition. The very 
constitution of man, thus, in a great measure, 
prescribes its own rules, and makes its own laws. 

The acts of man do not terminate in themselves. 
They have not only a direct effect upon the frame, 
but they operate by reflection upon the consci- 
ousness ; and here they become pleasurable or 
painful, both according to the motives in which 
they originated, and to the nature of their results 
upon the happiness of the individual or of his 
fellow-creatures. 

The voice of conscience seldom errs in enforcing 
moral rules ; though there may be a perverted con- 
science as well as a perverted appetite. The mental 
eye, like the physical eye, may not see clearly ; or 



THE UNIVERSE. 



69 



it may see things through a false and distorting 
medium. But occasional organic infirmities or 
defects do not disprove the perfection of the 
corporeal mechanism ; nor do incidental false 
judgments, in moral cases, furnish any argument 
against the generally wise decisions of conscience 
in the conduct of life. 

Conscience usually inflicts a pang when we omit 
to do what we think right, or do what we think 
wrong. It refers not so much to a fixed rule of 
right, as to what we think right. 

The Deity does not make the rule of right self- 
apparent to the mind. He leaves it to be deduced 
from the nature of man, and the constitution of 
the world ; and those who seek it with sincerity, 
will seldom fail in the object of their search. 

Man may, indeed, form erroneous judgments on 
the moral rule as well as on other things. But the 
feeling of self-blame or self-approbation follows 
the violation or practice of the rule, whatever it 
may be. The feeling does not make the rule, any 
more than the rule makes the feeling. But the 
feeling notes the sense of accountableness in the 
mind ; and here, do we not discern some traces of 
the moral government of the world ? Is not the 



70 



THE RELIGION OF 



moral constitution of man clearly seen in this, 
that some feeling of pleasure or pain, of praise or 
blame, of self-approbation or disapprobation, is 
more or less attached to our doing what we think 
to be right, or judge to be wrong ? 

If universality may be truly predicated of any- 
thing in the constitution of man, it is of the moral 
sentiments. Men differ about the beautiful, more 
than about the good. Hardly any two people can 
be found, who do not prefer truth to falsehood, or 
a kind and generous action to a cruel and base. 1 

If we had no moral sense, we should contem- 
plate all actions with indifference ; except as far as 
they had some reference to ourselves, to our own 
happiness or misery. But when we read a history 
or romance, in which the actions relate to past 
time, to individuals that no longer exist, or to 
events and persons which are entirely imaginary, 
the feeling of praise or blame, of approbation or 

1 u Que servent an sceptique Montaigne les tourments qu'il se 
donne pour deterrer en un coin du monde une coutume opposee aux 
notions de la justice ? Montaigne, toi qui te piques de franchise 
et de verite, sois sincere et vrai, et dis moi s'il est quelque pays sur 
la terre ou ce soit un crime de garder sa foi, d'etre clement, bien- 
faisant, genereux ; ou Thomme de bien soit meprisable, et le perfide 
honore." Rousseau, " Vicaire Savoyard," by V. Cousin, p. 93. 



THE UNIVERSE. 



71 



disapprobation, spontaneously arises in our breasts. 
This is not the effect of reason or reflection ; it 
springs up as we read ; it is felt before we can 
exercise the cogitative faculty. 

If it be the constitution of our nature, that cer- 
tain actions become pleasurable upon reflection, 
and other actions painful upon reflection ; and if 
the former, in the great majority of instances, are 
such as all the thinking and enlightened part of 
mankind have agreed to call moral, and conse- 
quently best calculated to promote the good of the 
individual and of society ; it is so far a proof that 
the Author of Nature has made both reason and 
feeling to furnish a sanction to moral acts, and to 
encourage their performance. 

These are the best and clearest grounds on which 
morality can be taught, and they are not above 
vulgar apprehension. Moral acts themselves 
furnish their own reasons, and contain their own 
recommendations ; and he who teaches them, 
should not do it upon any authority, whether 
ancient or modern ; but should deduce their truth, 
and show their importance, from the great book of 
man, from the very nature of his being, and from 
the constitution of the universe. 



72 



THE RELIGION OF 



Morality will thus be put upon its right basis — 
that of reason and experience ; and duty will be 
taught as coincident with interest. Traced through 
their long line of consequences, both present and 
future, both individual and social, they must ever 
remain the same. Their union exists in the nature 
of things, and it has so far received the sanction of 
the Deity. The Deity has made the greatest good 
which we can obtain, coincident with the highest 
duties we can perform. 

The path of duty, the moral path, is and must 
be, the path of happiness. He who deviates from 
that path, where duty prompts, mistakes the way 
to that point where alone the constituents of true 
happiness can be found. In the habitual per- 
formance of duty, there is a security above the 
peril of contingencies ; a peace which the frowns 
of fortune cannot destroy ; a hope, which elevates 
the humble worshipper to better prospects in a 
higher sphere. 

To study the perfections of Deity is the way to 
true wisdom. In very ancient times, the sages, who 
rose above the level of their age, came to the con- 
clusion, that religion and true wisdom were the 
same thing. In that beautiful and indeed sublime 



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73 



representation of wisdom, in Proverbs viii. 22-35/ 
the religious sentiment is attached to wisdom in its 
most profound researches, and its highest flights ; 
and all the accumulations of knowledge which a 
long life can make, are portrayed as the best means 
of becoming acquainted with the Divine agency, 
aud of knowing Grod as he ought to be known. 

If there be a true and a false wisdom, it must 
be religion combined with knowledge, seeking 
knowledge as its means, and making its revelations 
of Divine agency the end, that constitutes the 
true ; for it is only the fool who says in his heart, 
that there is no Grod. 

To make perfect wisdom and perfect goodness, 
as they are revealed in the intellectual and the 
material universe, the objects of our constant search, 
of our daily pursuit and our nightly meditation, 
is to be continually throwing off some of that 
darkness which clouds our vision, and bringing the 
Divine presence, in his unutterable perfections, 
more and more within our view. 

The Religion of the Universe will require 
teachers to explain the wonders of the universe, 

1 This passage was the chief basis of the Judaeo- Alexandrian 
speculations about Wisdom and the Logos. 



74 



THE RELIGION OF 



and to demonstrate the Divine agency to the 
ignorant ; but it has no need of priests to offer up 
prayers for the devout. The devout religionist com- 
munes with his maker in the interior of his own soul ; 
but not by the intervention of another man's lips. 

No absurdity can be greater than that of sup- 
posing that there can be a necessity for the inter- 
position of any third parties between God and his 
worshippers. The difference between the priest 
and the layman, is only the difference between one 
frail man and another frail man in a different 
dress ; and to suppose that this makes a difference 
in the sight of the All- wise, or that it procures a 
more ready access to the favour of the Eternal, is 
only one of the numerous fooleries and monstrous 
irrationalities, with which all, or almost all, existing 
religious systems teem. 

As God is everywhere, he is present in the 
mind of every worshipper ; and he knows the state 
of that mind better than the individual himself. 
This excludes the necessity of extraneous interpo- 
sition. It is idle mockery or vain presumption to 
suppose that the Deity is more influenced by the 
representations of a man in a sacerdotal garb, than 
by those of any other individual. 



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75 



The Religion of the Universe does not require 
priests to offer up prayers or supplications ; but 
only to instruct the people in those different mani- 
festations of the Divine agency, with which all 
nature teems and all the sciences abound. 

Thus a priest is not needed to pray for us, nor 
to teach us how to pray, but teachers are wanted 
to produce in us a more devout and truly religious 
state of mind than prayer supposes to exist. For 
prayer, in the common acceptation of the term, and 
in the common object of the practice, supposes 
false or imperfect notions of the Divine attributes 
in the mind. Prayer appears to me incompatible 
with truly correct and enlarged notions of the 
Infinite wisdom and goodness. It argues, more 
or less, a narrow view, or a latent distrust of that 
wisdom and goodness. Is it not, therefore, so far 
a species of Infidelity ? 

If prayer suggest a doubt of the Divine wisdom 
what is it but impious presumption? But must 
not the prayer-maker doubt the wisdom whose 
decrees he labours to alter, or invokes the Deity to 
reverse ? Religionists of all descriptions believe, 
or profess to believe, in the infinite wisdom and 
goodness of the Deity ; but is it not irreconcilable 



76 



THE RELIGION OF 



with a sincere belief in that wisdom and goodness 
to suppose it vacillating in its designs and variable 
in its conduct ? To pray that the acts of Infinite 
wisdom and goodness may not be what they are, 
or that they may be altered in their tendencies and 
frustrated in their results, seems the height of 
folly and impiety. "Who would be so besotted as 
to offer up prayers against his own health, peace, 
security and enjoyment ? And yet, do we do any 
thing more reasonable, when we pour forth com- 
plaints or utter prayers against the Divine dispen- 
sations ? If Grod is infinitely wise, he must know 
what is good for us, better than we do ourselves ; 
and, if he is infinitely good, our greatest good 
must be the object of his government. 

But, in the majority of prayers, which indivi- 
duals make, or churches direct to be made, are not 
our gross, imperfect, and narrow views of good 
represented as if they ought to interest the regard 
or receive the preference of the Eternal ? In 
prayer, the finite presumes to alter the views, or 
change the will of the Infinite. Does this show 
right views of religion ? Does it manifest a truly 
devout state of mind ? If religion consists in 
knowing God, and in entertaining correct and 



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77 



enlightened views of his agency in the moral and 
material universe, is this prayer-making practice 
a part of such religion ? Is it not rather an alloy, 
which ignorance or superstition, which bigoted 
zeal, or interested craft, has mingled with the 
genuine substance of the native ore ? 

Can the prayer-maker have that confidence 
which he ought to have, and which true religion 
inculcates and inspires, in the Divine goodness, 
when he prays that the acts of that goodness may 
be altered in their tendencies or made null in their 
effects ? Is this the conduct becoming a devout 
man, placing his firm and unalterable rest on 
Infinite wisdom and goodness ? Is it not rather 
the conduct of an infidel ? 

A reliance, humble, affectionate, and sincere, 
on the Supreme wisdom and goodness, ought to 
induce us cheerfully to acquiesce in its decrees. 
To pray against those decrees is for ignorant man 
to become the antagonist of Omniscience. "What 
folly can be greater, or so great ? 

In those circumstances, in which the difficultv 
may be removed, in which the wound may be 
healed, or the sickness overcome, in which we 
may avoid the tempest or escape from the wreck, 



78 



THE RELIGION OF 



it behoves us, as rational beings, vigorously to act 
rather than inertly to pray ; to make the best use 
we can of the mental and corporeal powers which 
Grod has given us, and not to waste our breath in 
deprecating his vengeance, which is no part of his 
perfect nature, or in imploring him to make his 
will, with respect to us, frustrate by some super- 
natural interposition. Infinite goodness cannot 
will any thing that is not good, even if we look to 
the truest good of individuals ; why should they, 
in their ignorance, implore that which, if obtained, 
would constitute their injury rather than their 
benefit — their loss rather than their gain ? 

Our disposition to make prayers, supplications, 
and intercessions is very much increased by our low 
notions of the Deity. It is too much the practice 
to feign a Grod in our own likeness ; to make him 
after our own hearts. We anthropomorphise the 
Deity. We make a man, a frail, mutable, vacil- 
lating man of the Eternal. We humanize the 
great Author of the universe. We give him, in 
our vain and imaginary delineations of his nature, 
human thoughts and passions ; and as we know 
that the will of a frail man may be bent and altered 
by entreaties and importunities, we fondly suppose 



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79 



that a similar effect may be produced in the voli- 
tions of Omnipotence. But does this supposition 
mark a truly devout state of mind or the contrary ? 
Are not the prayers which it causes us to utter, 
and the invocations which it incites us to make, 
rather the indications of an unbelieving state of 
mind than of that thorough trust and devout 
resignation, which an enlarged and comprehensive 
view of the Divine agency will produce ? 

Our mental and physical powers, which are 
indefinitely improvable by continual culture and 
exercise, are the instruments with which Grod has 
furnished us for attaining the greatest degree of 
good of which our nature is susceptible, or which 
our present circumstances will permit. But, if 
instead of vigorously cultivating those faculties, 
we suffer them to become benumbed by sloth and 
paralysed by disuse, if, instead of labouring to 
acquire all the good in our power, we sink into an 
apathetic indolence, and think that prayer and 
supplication, however ardent or unceasing, will 
induce the Deity to do for us what we ought to do 
for ourselves, or that devotional fervour and im- 
portunity will compensate the defect of personal 
diligence and activity; does it not prove that our 



80 



THE RELIGION OF 



religion is only a vain form of words, and that it 
has not taught us to know God as we ought to 
know him, and as all may know him, who will 
patiently study his works, and constantly imitate 
his perfections ? When there is a leak in the ship 
and the tempest threatens a wreck, it behoves us 
to work vigorously at the pumps ; but if instead of 
doing this, we throw ourselves upon our knees and 
have recourse to prayers, are we likely to preserve 
our own lives or to save the ship ? The human 
agency must co-operate with the Divine. If we 
wish the seed to come up, it must be previously 
sown. The devotional invocation of the husband- 
man will be found a poor substitute for his agricul- 
tural toils. It is an old but a true maxim, that 
"virtus in actione consistit," virtue consists in 
action ; and religion is so far from consisting in 
devout sloth, or holy inactivity, that its highest 
excellence is the strenuous imitation of the Divine 
agency and perfections. 

Grod gives the faculty, but he requires the use ; 
and according to the fixed laws of the universe, 
the penalty, which no prayer-making can avert, 
follows the neglect. 

The practice of prayer, according to the common 



THE UXIVERSE. 



81 



modes, and the prescribed ceremonials, appears to 
me to throw great, if not insuperable impediments 
in the way of religious improvement. Religious 
improvement depends on the increased and in- 
creasing knowledge of God. Increased knowledge 
implies an addition to the stock of ideas in the 
mind. But can this be effected by the practice of 
praying, or by any of the common formularies of 
devotion ? The few ideas they contain, become 
mere dull and wearisome formalities by continual 
repetition. They are sounds void of meaning to 
the ear ; and words that excite no intellectual 
movement in the mind. But religion consists of 
acts, rather than of words. Its great and para- 
mount object is to elevate the human nature to 
the divine ; but prayer on the other hand, by 
humanising the Deity, tends to lower his image to 
the level of our ordinary humanity. We make 
Grod an incarnation of what is frail in man. We 
lower the Omniscient to the level of our ignorance 
and imperfections. We suppose that the suppliant 
breath of our erring lips can induce the All-wise 
to do what he would otherwise leave undone ; or 
to make some change in his previous resolutions. 
Hence, must not this habit tend to instil more 

6 



82 



THE RELIGION OF 



degrading notions of the Deity into the mind than 
are consistent with true piety ; or than he, who 
is impressed with a profound reverence for the 
Infinite and the Eternal, will think it right to 
entertain ? 

We do not importune an individual like our- 
selves, to give what it is the character of his 
disposition spontaneously to bestow. It is neither 
courteous nor wise ; it would be a proof of bad 
taste, of impatient rapacity, or craving selfishness. 
But, with respect to the Deity, can it ever be con- 
sistent with a steady and enlightened piety, with 
a right sense of his moral government, or a warm 
trust in his parental r egard, to importune him day 
and night, for that which he will of his own free 
bounty grant, if it be for our benefit ? In all 
prayer must there not be some latent distrust of 
the Divine goodness ? or, is it not more or less an 
indication, that faith, resignation, and the best 
religious sentiments have not obtained a complete 
ascendant over the mind ? 

When the Religion of the Universe is substituted 
for the existing superstitions, the teachers cf the 
new doctrine will expose the futility of the prayer- 
making formalities and formularies in the old. 



THE UNIVERSE. 



83 



How much time has it occupied that might have 
been devoted to some more useful purpose ; to 
mental improvement, to physical enjoyment, or to 
corporeal recreation ? How much industry has it 
relaxed, how much sloth has it occasioned ? Might 
not the time, that has thus been mis-spent in a 
formal or hypocritical service, have been employed 
in promoting the best interests of piety, and the 
intellectual advancement of man ? 

Though I am adverse to the irrational rigours 
and pharisaical scrupulosities of sabbatical observ- 
ance, I warmly espouse the wisdom of setting apart 
one day in seven as a day of rest from physical 
toil, when even the most humble peasant in the 
kingdom should give some attention to the acquisi- 
tion of knowledge, and to the cultivation of his 
mind. In both these great objects the poorest 
and most ignorant would be assisted by those 
teachers who, in a better order of things, would 
be appointed to explain the Religion of the 
Universe. And as that religion consists in know- 
ing Grod, and Grod is to be known only in his 
works, some of those works would be continually 
developed to every mind. Every rational and re- 
flecting individual would thus be incited to rise to a 



84 



THE RELIGION OF 



higher and higher grade in the intellectual scale. 
The most interesting facts in natural history would 
be opened to view ; and the whole creation, as 
far as it is within the cognizance of humanity, 
would show the Divine agency in some of its 
innumerable manifestations in the moral, the in- 
tellectual, and the material universe. 

The evidences of the Religion of the Universe 
are contained in the great book of the universe ; 
and the more they are developed, the more hal- 
lowed the light which they will shed upon the 
mind. Every science will, each Sunday, be 
more or less laid under contribution in order to 
exhibit to the most humble labourer or artificer 
some of the wonderful truths with which it 
abounds. And these truths, of whatever nature 
they may be, and from whatever source derived, 
whether geological or astronomical, whether taken 
from anatomy, from botany, mineralogy, or 
chemistry, will soon be found in the highest 
degree productive of useful knowledge, edifying 
converse, and innocent delight. 

The topics of conversation amongst the people, 
which are now few and scanty, and of course 
circumscribed within the narrow boundary of 



THE UNIVERSE. 



85 



local and personal topics, will be multiplied and 
enlarged. Ideas that are now confined to a few 
will circulate among the many ; and thus the 
endeavour to make God known will make men 
happy and wise. A truly devout state of mind 
cannot fail to be the product of that religion 
which consists in showing the Divine agency 
and perfections in the heavens above and in the 
earth beneath. 1 None of those dogmatisms that 
narrow the mind and harden the heart can so be 
inculcated. 

Under the old religions, or rather superstitions, 
the many-coloured creeds and multifarious dogma- 



1 Had Paley been an advocate for the Eeligion of the Universe, 
he could not have eulogised it with more cogency, or have 
exhibited its superiority to all other systems with more clearness, 
than in the following passage which is taken from the xxvii. 
chapter of his Xatural Theology. "If one train of thinking be 
more desirable than another, it is that which regards the phenomena 
of nature with a constant reference to a supreme intelligent Author. 
To have made this the ruling, the habitual sentiment of our minds, 
is to have laid the foundation of everything which is religious. 
The world henceforth becomes a temple, and life itself one continued 
act of adoration. The change is no less than this, that, whereas 
God was seldom in our thoughts, we can now scarcely look upon 
any thing without perceiving its relation to him." — Xat. Theol. 
p. 460. The man who could write thus might have promoted 
the great interests of mankind better than by defending established 
dogmatisms and supernatural interpositions. 



86 



THE RELIGION OF 



tisms of which they are composed, give rise to a 
variety of sects. Those dogmatisms form the cen- 
tral points of discord and strife. They consti- 
tute the germ of malignant animosities, and afford 
a pretext for party hostilities. But the Eeligion 
of the Universe, which substitutes facts for dog- 
matisms, and clear and definite deductions from 
those facts for vague generalities and cloudy 
theories, has a strong tendency to prevent the 
growth, or to moderate the strife of sects ; and 
to unite all in the investigation of truths which 
must be generally interesting. 

In the Eeligion of the Universe the great object 
of all is, and must be, to know God ; and as Grod 
can be known only in the revelations of the mental 
and material universe, the acquisition of that 
knowledge becomes the great object, after which 
every individual will most anxiously strive. And 
whether he be Jew, Christian, or Mahometan, or 
of any other ancient creed, these distinctions will 
cease, or remain merely nominal, so far as he suc- 
ceeds in making a proficiency in the Eeligion of 
the Universe ; the only real religious difference 
among men will become one of an intellectual and 
moral kind. 



THE UNIVERSE. 



87 



Intellectual advancement associated with moral 
progress, or the combined growth of wisdom and 
virtue, will constitute the only criterion of worth 
amongst the aggregated myriads of the human 
race. The Religion of the Universe will suppress 
the unseemly pride and moderate the invidious 
distinctions of rank and wealth ; and individuals 
will be higher or lower in the estimation of 
their fellow- creatures according to the grade to 
which they attain in the moral and intellectual 
scale. 

The Religion of the Universe thus tends to give 
the strongest possible impetus to the individual, 
the social, and the political improvement of man ; 
and accordingly to afford the greatest security and 
the longest continuance to peace, to liberty, and 
to happiness. 

The old religions degrade and prostrate the 
understanding ; they make it crawling and servile. 
But the religion here recommended, the great 
and paramount object of which is to know God, 
gives dignity and elevation to the mind. It makes 
the revelations of the Divine agency in all the 
phenomena of the universe the school of the 
human intellect ; it points to the abode of higher 



88 



THE RELIGION OF 



natures, to the sun and the stars, as the final 
destiny of man. 

Though the Religion of the Universe excludes 
formalities of prayer from any part of its minis- 
trations, as being contrary to a right sense of 
the Divine goodness, yet it by no means excludes 
the expression of gratitude and thanksgiving, and 
under its influence, the good man is perpetually 
holding communion with God. He sees God 
everywhere. Every flower, shell, mineral, bird, 
fish ; every thing on the earth, in the air, or the 
ocean; every thing, from the fossil in the rock, 
to the star in the firmament, brings the perfections 
of the Infinite to his mind, and makes them an 
object of hallowed meditation. 

The meditations of the good man, under the 
influence of the only true religion, and in con- 
formity with its spirit and injunctions, are a 
continual prayer. They are the breathings of 
love, the aspirations of holiness, though they 
deprecate none of the Divine edicts, and invoke 
no supernatural interpositions. 

The devotional feelings which are inspired by 
the Religion of the Universe, have nothing sordid, 
low, or earthly in their elementary particles. 



THE UNIVERSE. 



89 



They are made up of the most entire resignation 
to the Divine will in every circumstance, whether 
of weal or woe. 

The devout man who has imbibed any portion 
of that unsophisticated spirit of piety which the 
Religion of the Universe, when rightly understood, 
will infuse into the soul, knows, and knows to his 
entire comfort and innermost satisfaction, that, 
whatever God does, Infinite wisdom directs and 
Infinite goodness performs. To pray that such 
acts may be frustrated, or that, after they are 
willed, they may not come to pass ; or to invoke 
something to intervene between the intention and 
the deed, seems, as far as Omniscience is concerned, 
the very acme of folly and profaneness. 

The life of the good man is better than all the 
prayers of all the formularies of all the churches 
in the world. Habits of righteousness are a 
constant prayer ; they address the Creator in 
a voice which angels speak ; and which Infinite 
goodness always regards. The good man's in- 
vocation, the righteous man's prayers, are not 
words but deeds. They are the kind of prayer 
which is in strict unison with the laws of 
the universe, and which is productive of innu- 



90 



THE RELIGION OF 



merable blessings to the individual and to the 
community. 

The Religion of the Universe being an in- 
fluence over human life mainly depending on 
knowledge of Grod, it would devote the day which 
the old religions set apart for prayer, to a holier 
purpose — to the elucidation of truths which, while 
they manifest the Divine agency and perfections, 
contribute more or less to the well-being of man. 

There is scarcely any important truth in any 
of the sciences, particularly where proofs or 
illustrations are furnished by experiment, which 
may not be so far popularised as to be brought 
within the sphere of the most ordinary under- 
standing. This should be the great office of such 
teachers as the Religion of the Universe re- 
quires, and which a patriotic government, whose 
interest is identified with that of the nation, would 
appoint. jN"or do I know how ten thousand persons 
could be better employed than in bringing that 
true knowledge of Grod, in which the Religion of 
the Universe consists, home to the thresholds of 
the poor. And if ten thousand persons of great 
general knowledge and high mental cultivation 
were thus employed, who is there that would not 



THE UNIVERSE. 



91 



deem them worthy of the most ample recompense 
which a generous people could bestow ? 

Besides those truths which are strictty scientific 
and demonstrative, there are others which depend 
on moral reasoning ; which are rather probabilities 
than certainties ; rather inferences than facts ; but 
which have an extensive influence on human 
interest and happiness ; which the teachers of the 
people, under the influence of a better system, and 
the sanctions of a more enlightened faith, would 
make it their business to teach and feel it their 
duty to diffuse. Among these truths, the best 
maxims of political economy would not be over- 
looked ; for, in many of these truths, the peace, 
the security, the subsistence, and the general 
well-being of society are intimately involved. The 
popular ignorance of such truths has often led to 
the most tremendous convulsions and the most 
fearful crimes. Of how much importance is it, 
then, to the peace and happiness of every com- 
munity, particularly of every community that is 
made up of diversified occupations and complicated 
interests, that the great considerations which 
regulate the price of labour, should be clearly 
understood and universally known ! The price of 



92 



THE RELIGION OF 



labour is not, as ignorance is apt to suppose, a 
matter of an optional nature, or of individual 
caprice, but is strictly and indefeasibly governed by 
the principle of supply and demand. Wherever 
the poor are resolutely determined to improve 
their condition, and to rise in the intellectual 
scale, they must either enlarge the field of labour, 
or keep the supply of it rather below than above 
the level of the demand. When this is the 
case, the condition of the community will wear 
the aspect of an increasing prosperity ; but when 
the supply of labour greatly exceeds the demand, 
the circumstances of the people soon exhibit a 
melancholy change for the worse. Pauperism shows 
its haggard form and desponding look ; and the 
accumulated misery of the Irish poor is only an 
illustration of the above-mentioned truth on a 
large scale. But would not the ministers of any 
establishment be much more usefully employed in 
inculcating this and similar truths, and thus making 
the mass of the community acquainted with the true 
causes of their weal and woe, than in perplexing 
their minds with mystical definitions of the un- 
knowable ? 

Every individual knows that man must live by 



THE UNIVERSE, 



93 



what comes out of the earth ; and that what is 
good for subsistence, must, for the most part, be 
produced by corporeal toil. But everybody does 
not understand that the smaller the numerical 
mass by which the earth can be so cultivated as 
to furnish a supply of subsistence sufficient for the 
population, the more minds and hands may be 
employed, in inventing, producing, or making 
articles of comfort and convenience, so as to add to 
the common stock of commodities ; or, by inventing 
new wants, to cause new modes of industry ; and 
by new modes of industry to enlarge the great 
circle of human enjoyment. The less expense 
with which food can be produced, or what amounts 
to the same thing, the smaller the number of 
labourers with which it can be produced, the 
better for the other portions of the community. 
Hence the benefit of the machines which abridge 
labour, and let so many loose from the plough to 
follow other occupations, or to minister to other 
wants. And the more wants any community has 
beyond the mere gratification of the animal 
appetites, the more industry is excited ; the greater 
diversity of occupations is occasioned ; and a 
greater multitude of satisfactions produced. Truths 



94 



THE RELIGIOX OF 



of this nature ought, among others, to form part of 
the instruction which the Religion of the Universe 
requires its ministers to develope to the ignorant, 
and particularly to communicate to the poor. 

There is one topic on which the ministers of 
that religion will often dilate to those whom it is 
their duty to instruct. The moral government of 
the world is one of the most awfully interesting 
subjects that can occupy the human mind. If 
there be no moral government, no power above 
human, making a line of eternal separation between 
good and evil, truth and falsehood, justice and 
injustice, malignity and beneficence, virtue and 
vice become mere conventional things. The 
difference between them is imaginary, not real ; 
evanescent, not fixed ; temporary, not eternal. 
What man does, then becomes a matter of indif- 
ference, as far as respects his future destiny, 
or that gracious acceptance of the Deity, without 
which there can be no lasting good, no permanent 
felicity. But is there any real ground for such a 
depressing theory, such a heart-rending supposi- 
tion ? Do not all the principal phenomena of 
the moral world lead to a different conclusion ? If 
all actions are alike in the sight of God, and one 



THE UNIVERSE. 



95 



is not more an object of his favour than another, 
why is conscience, or anything like conscience, 
implanted in the human breast ? Is it not a 
mockery ? But can Infinite wisdom be supposed 
thus to jest with his own laws, and to make a mere 
phantom, an unreal shadow of that with which he 
has connected the most refined and the most 
hallowed satisfactions, as if on purpose to give a 
sanction to the precepts, and an elevation to the 
dignity of virtue in the human breast ? 

When we look abroad in the world, and take a 
rapid but a scrutinizing survey of human affairs, 
do we not remark that things are ordered, that 
they pass on in such a series of effects, or move 
in such, a sequence one after the other, as to 
impress a profound conviction on the thoughtful 
mind that virtue is the greatest good, the highest 
interest of man ? Present appearances may, at 
times, favour a contrary supposition ; but these 
appearances are only transient, and are always, 
sooner or later, followed by effects that lead to a 
very different conclusion. 1 



1 This subject is well treated by Professor E. Zeller, of Heidel- 
berg, in an essay on " The Moral Order of the "World," which will 
ere long be re-published in a volume of Miscellanies. 



96 



THE RELIGION OF 



Good or evil seems to happen indifferently to all 
men ; but when viewed in numerous instances and 
contemplated on a wide area of events, a moral 
preference is still often perceptible in the distribu- 
tions of felicity. That moral preference sometimes 
seems to run in a sort of silver thread through the 
tissue of human life. Individuals cannot very 
definitely or distinctly see it in other men's lives ; 
but almost every individual may, more or less, 
trace it in his own. Good follows good. Yirtue 
has always some more or less latent root, that 
runs on till it shoots up into happiness. The 
righteous are never utterly forsaken. Their acts 
may not have an immediate corresponding effect 
in the production of happiness. Even the good 
seed may lie a more than usual time in the ground 
before it comes up or blooms. But at last it 
appears in an abundance of fruit, that exceeds all 
expectation. Hope, that had begun to despond, 
wears a sunny smile ; and the heart vibrates to the 
truth of the sentiment, " Verily there is a reward 
for the righteous/' Doubtless there is a moral 
order even in terrestrial things. 

In inculcating these truths, which form part 
of the Religion of the Universe, teachers of the 



THE UNIVERSE. 



97 



people will not fail to appeal to individual ex- 
perience, and to cheering proofs of the important 
verity supplied by traces of providential agency 
in every man's life, and the feelings responding 
to the sentiment in every man's breast. 

There are some particular topics which are 
merged in the deepest obscurities of uncertain 
speculation, but on which, as they are of universal 
interest, and will always, more or less, occupy the 
human mind, it may be right for the ministers of 
religion occasionally to expatiate. Interesting 
probabilities may suggest themselves, where no 
certain knowledge can be obtained. Amoiig the 
questions that will for ever perplex the inquirer 
and agitate the human mind, one relates to the — 
Where are we to go after death ? Where is the 
region to which departed spirits migrate ? Where 
is the soul to have its place of beatitude ? Where 
is the mind to begin a new and higher grade of 
intellectual advancement, in its way through the 
maze of being:, to a more and more enlarged and 
comprehensive knowledge of the Divine agency, 
and a nearer and nearer communion with the 
Infinite Spirit ; that Infinite whom, though ever 
knowing, it will never know ; whose perfections, 

7 



98 



THE RELIGION OF 



though ever anxiously scrutinizing, it will never 
thoroughly understand. " Deuni scire est nihil 
nescire." If to know God be to know everything, 
how small is the sum of that knowledge which 
a finite being can ever attain in its transitions 
through innumerable worlds in endless time ! 

But the knowledge that is poor, scanty, and 
minute, with respect to the Infinite Intelligence, 
may be large, and vast, and glorious, with respect 
to the attainments of any particular individual 
at some antecedent period, or viewed in relation 
to those of similar natures or contemporaneous 
beings. 

Among the questions, as to the where we are 
to go after death, if we were to resolve it by sup- 
posing that it will be to some of the other planets 
in the system of which our earth is one of the 
constituent parts, this idea must occur to the 
scrutinizing mind, that it is fully as probable that 
the inhabitants of other planets should migrate to 
this, as that we should pass into them. But if 
the mental or spiritual entities in other planets do 
become inhabitants of this, it must be in a state 
of unconsciousness, or without any sentiment of 
pre-existence. Some philosophers, indeed, have 



THE UNIVERSE. 



99 



supposed a prior existence, but then it must have 
been an existence of which we have no recognition. 

On the supposition of a prior existence without 
consciousness we may have had several prior ex- 
istences, several antecedent lives. T vVe may have 
begun our being in Uranus, or the planet which 
we deem most remote from the sun, or in one still 
more distant if such there be ; and may thence 
have migrated into the other planetary bodies, 
till we passed into the human form on this earth. 
This is all fanciful conjecture and visionary specu- 
lation ; but if it should be true, it would be then 
probable, that, after death, the mind would take 
its departure to the next planet between us and 
the sun, but with no more consciousness of our 
prior existence on this planet, than we have here 
of any previous existence in Jupiter or Uranus. 

The mind or spirit, or whatever makes the real, 
indestructible entity of man, might, according to 
the above hypothesis, lastly wing its way, after a 
temporary abode in the intermediate planets, into 
the sun. In that luminary, the great centre of 
the planetary worlds, the Infinite Spirit may, for 
the first time, infuse into us a consciousness of our 
prior existences, and of the previous states through 



100 



THE RELIGION OF 



which we have passed, with the whole chain of acts 
and events that formed the substance of our ante- 
cedent history. 

All this is fanciful and visionary ; but it is, at 
least, as probable as any other hypothesis that we 
can adopt ; and, indeed, when we think only for a 
moment on the where we are to go after death, 
how can we arrive at any conclusion that is not 
visionary and fanciful ? Of the several super- 
natural revelations that are supposed to have been 
made to man, not one has pretended to give any 
clear and definite idea of the state of man after 
death, or of the precise where the human soul is 
to have its habitation. 

If the theory, of which I have sketched the 
outline, be at all consonant with the reality, the 
sun would be the first stage of being on which 
we shall enter with the consciousness of past ex- 
istence. 

If the sun of our system be not our final and 
everlasting abode, there are countless millions of 
planets and suns into which the infinite wisdom 
may transfer us, and from which we may succes- 
sively ascend to higher and higher grades of in- 
tellectual life ; where the agency of the Eternal 



i 

THE "UNIVERSE. 



101 



may be more and more luminously manifested to 
the mind ; where we may rise to more and more 
comprehensive views of the Divine perfections ; 
and thus become better acquainted with the Re- 
ligion of the Universe. 

The Religion of the Universe, unlike the decrees 
of councils, and the creeds of churches or sects, 
requires the perpetual exercise of the reasoning- 
powers. The constant exercise of those powers, 
in order to abound more and more in the know- 
ledge of God, and in that knowledge to seek our 
greatest good and our highest happiness, is what 
the Religion of the Universe most imperiously 
enjoins, as most agreeable to our nature, and most 
requisite in our circumstances. 

The Religion of the Universe, unlike those 
systems which are of human origin, abounds with 
present, actual, and never-ceasing revelations. This 
proves its superiority to all the systems which are 
^to be found in the world. Those systems are 
founded on pretended supernatural interventions ; 
but which are proved to be fabulous by this single 
circumstance, that time obscures their light and 
weakens their evidence. 

A revelation, with a decreasing evidence, can 



102 



THE RELIGION OF 



be no revelation at all ; for how can that be a 
divine light, and particularly a light intended 
for the illumination of mankind throughout all 
time, which must, from its very nature, gradually 
become more and more dim, till it is totally ex- 
tinguished ? 

The light of natural religion, which is con- 
tinually receiving fresh accessions of proof from 
the boundless reservoirs of science, and from the 
progressive advancement of the human intellect, 
is perpetually expanding over a wider surface, and 
acquiring increased strength ; while the light of 
what may be termed supernatural religion is con- 
tinually becoming less. Natural religion is every 
day receiving some additions to its light, some 
accessions to its proofs ; while the light and the 
proofs of the supernatural, are in a state of per- 
petual diminution. Natural religion having a cu- 
mulative evidence, has an increasing credibility ; 
but the time is coming s when no man will give 
credit to the display of any supernatural interpo* 
sition in the origin of Judaism, under any of its 
forms. 

Some religionists talk of this world, as if it 
were merely a probationary state. But whether 



THE UNIVERSE. 



103 



it be the first stage of our being, or, as some think, 
only a continuation, but without consciousness, of 
an antecedent state, this character of a state of 
trial does not seem in unison with the facts, or 
conformable to the truth. If it be the first stage 
of our being, then it may be regarded only as the 
first link in a chain of being running into eternity. 
If it be the second, third, or any subsequent stage, 
but without consciousness, then we must suppose 
that its peculiar circumstances, as it respects indi- 
viduals, must have a reference to something done 
by those individuals in that antecedent state. In- 
stead, then, of being a preliminary to something 
that is to be — a preface to the first page in the 
book of life, it is a consequence of something that 
has been ; an effect of some moral causation in a 
previous existence. But, as we are not conscious 
of any antecedent existence, we must regard it as 
an improbable, though, according to a previous 
hypothesis, not an impossible supposition ; and it 
behoves us, in considering the question whether 
this life be or be not a state of trial, to confine 
our attention exclusively to the phenomena of the 
present life, and see whether they warrant the 
supposition that it is a probationary state. 



104 



THE RELIGION OF 



That life is a chequered scene ; that it is made 
up of a great diversity of circumstances and con- 
ditions ; that, as far as respects individuals, it is 
composed of high and low, of rich and poor, strong 
and weak, healthy and sick, young and old ; are 
truths of common experience and general observa- 
tion. These different circumstances and periods 
constitute a diversity of duties, of which the per- 
formance should be inculcated, not so much with a 
view to a future recompense in another state of 
things, as to their benefit in this present life, both 
to the individual himself, and to the society of 
which he forms a part. 

Most religionists inculcate virtue too much as a 
posthumous benefit. They strip it too often of its 
present charms, and its immediate advantages ; 
they make it appear as if, in this world, it was 
a deformity rather than a loveliness, an injury 
rather than a benefit ; causing its authors to be 
reviled and appreciated, rather than honoured and 
approved. But, independently of the pleasurabl? 
self-consciousness of virtuous action, it has, and 
must ever have, from the nature of man and the 
constitution of the universe, a tendency to promote 
both individual and social good. 



THE UNIVERSE. 



105 



Self-satisfaction, inward peace, outward respect, 
and external advantages of different kinds, must 
necessarily, more or less, follow in its train ; and 
these constitute the highest recommendations to 
the pursuit, and the strongest motives to the per- 
formance. If we were to analyze all the different 
virtues, as truth, justice, temperance, chastity, 
beneficence, we should find that they must neces- 
sarily, in their effects and consequences, be con- 
ducive to the benefit of individuals and of states. 
If this be true, why should virtuous action, or 
righteousness, or right doing, be inculcated prin- 
cipally by motives drawn from the future, rather 
than the present ; by its uncertain and unknown, 
rather than by its certain, temporal, and visible 
benefits ? The temporal good, the present benefit, 
is that to which we ought principally to look ; and 
from which those who teach the Religion of the 
Universe will draw their most impressive argu- 
ments and their most animated exhortations. For 
we are placed in this world to live in it, and not 
out of it ; and to do that duty, which is required 
by our age and circumstances, as the surest means 
of obtaining that which is the greatest good and 
the most permanent happiness. 



106 



THE RELIGION OF 



If this life be only one stage of our being, the 
good which righteousness produces does not end 
here ; it runs into eternity. But for an ephemeral 
being, like man, to live for eternity and not for 
time ; or to do good primarily and exclusively 
with the hope of everlasting blessedness, is to be 
unmindful of his real circumstances and his most 
imperative obligations. 

That man should be placed in one world, only in 
order to live for another ; and that all his actions 
should have a reference only to that other, rather 
than to the present material, visible and tangible 
good, both individual and social, to which an un- 
deviating course of moral action almost invariably 
leads, is to abandon the substance for the shadow ; 
and to despise that enjoyment which the Deity 
has placed before us, as the incentive to goodness ; 
and the primary, though not the sole motive to 
the performance. 

Paley, I think, defines virtue to be the doing 
of good, in obedience to the will of God, and for 
the sake of everlasting happiness. That it is the 
will of God that we should do good, or that we 
should endeavour to promote our own happiness 
as well as that of others, is a proposition to which 



THE UNIVERSE. 



107 



few will refuse their assent ; but it is far from 
being so clear that we ought to do all this for the 
sake of everlasting happiness. 

This seems like requiring a most usurious in- 
terest for every benefit which we confer and every 
act of self-denial which we practise. It is carry- 
ing our virtue to market, and running it up to the 
highest possible price. 

If for every penny we gave to-day we were to 
stipulate to receive a pound a few years hence, it 
would be to practise charity at the rate of many 
hundreds per cent, profit. Would not this put 
an end to all feeling of disinterestedness in the 
operations of beneficence ? Would it not tend to 
make the minimum of virtue the maximum of 
selfishness ? 

A good man will practise virtue for its own 
sake, rather than for the sole sake of any profit- 
able result. The author of our being has made 
us not only to desire our own good, but to sympa- 
thize with that of others. This is the constitu- 
tion of our nature ; and this was not designed to 
make beneficence a matter of selfish calculation. 
It was rather intended to produce a better state of 
heart, and a more elevated tone of mind. 



108 



THE RELIGION OF 



Morality does not depend for its sanctions on 
authority ; nor is command the essence of the 
obligation. It is more especially obligatory, be- 
cause obedience to its rules is conducive to the 
welfare of man, as an individual and as a social 
being. Obedience to the rules of temperance, 
which is one branch of moral duty, is essential 
to health, or to the physical well-being and intel- 
lectual improvement of the individual. 

Truth and justice are the foundations of social 
happiness. Without a conformity to their rules, 
at least in the great majority of instances, there 
can be no security for property, for character, or 
for life. We should live in a state of perpetual 
peril and alarm. 

But truth and justice are not obligatory so 
much because they are commanded, as because 
they are found by experience to be essential to the 
well-being of man in the different relations of his 
social existence. If their nature had not th&se 
tendencies, and their practice these effects, they 
would be matters of indifference. They are not, 
therefore questions of authority, so much as de- 
ductions from the observation of their beneficial 
consequences. 



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109 



A geometrical truth is not true because it was 
the dictum of Euclid, or Archimedes, of Newton 
or Euler. A geometrical truth carries with it its 
own evidence. It furnishes its own proofs. But 
is not morality also its own evidence ? Does it not 
furnish its own proofs ? Take any moral truth, 
and try it by the test of its results. Will it not 
demonstrate itself by the mirror of its own use- 
fulness ? 

If man desire the highest degree of well-being 
of which his nature is susceptible, he must practise 
those rules which morality prescribes. 

Certain evils usually follow the violation of 
moral rules. Those evils are the proof that the 
rules cannot be violated with impunity. They 
thus furnish their own proof, and act as execu- 
tioners of their own commands. 

It would be no recommendation to mathematical 
truths, to make them rest on the strength or splen- 
dour of any individual name. No name can in 
itself constitute evidence; and how can it furnish 
proof? 

When Paley tells us that virtue consists in 
doing good in obedience to the will of God, and 
for the sake of everlasting happiness, he would 



110 



THE RELIGION OF 



have talked more rationally if he had said that 
virtue is the law of our nature, as individual and 
as social beings ; as insulated beings, who are parts 
of a larger whole ; and that we cannot obtain the 
greatest good, which is the object of our desire ; 
or that our individual and social condition cannot 
receive the highest degree of improvement, with- 
out the practice of truth, justice, and beneficence 
in our social relations ; or without temperance, 
moderation, and a reasonable self-government in 
our individual capacity. Now, as it is God who 
has made us what we are, both individually and 
socially, those virtues which are most requisite to 
the acquisition of individual and social good, must 
be regarded as his will ; but which it behoves us 
to practise ourselves and to recommend to others, 
because reason proves that such practice is essen- 
tial to our own happiness and to that of the com- 
munity. 

A belief in the infinite wisdom and goodness 
which lies at the root of the Religion of the Uni- 
verse, will not permit us to doubt that what that 
wisdom and goodness order to be done, it is best 
for us to do. But then we know that temporal 
good, which is the present result of this obedience, 



THE UNIVERSE. 



Ill 



was not designed to be a minor and subordinate 
consideration, but to exercise a leading influence 
on our volitions and our conduct. 

The ordinary gloomy representations of human 
life by the Calvinists and other religionists, are 
neither agreeable to truth nor favourable to virtue. 
They darken the canvass till all cheerfulness 
vanishes ; all joy is extinguished ; and earth looks 
like hell. But the Religion of the Universe will not 
permit us to ascribe such a system to the Deity ; 
nor to believe in such fantastic and distorted 
representations of his agency and attributes. 

The earth, the air, and the ocean swarm with 
life ; and life is always more or less connected 
with pleasurable sensation. Indeed it appears to 
me that, in the majority of instances, the sum of 
pleasurable sensation greatly exceeds that of the 
opposite ; but where the equilibrium is destroyed, 
and painful feelings predominate, life soon ceases, 
and death ensues. The Author of the universe 
in giving life seems always to give it with a view 
to the happiness of his creatures, of whatever 
grade they may be in the scale of being. Every 
creature seems to seek its own good, and to be 
furnished with the means of attaining it. Irra- 



112 



THE RELIGION OF 



tional creatures do it instinctively, and under a 
guidance which is not liable to the aberrations into 
which the responsible liberty of higher or rational 
beings is liable to fall. 

As the good of man is social as well as indi- 
vidual, and as his individual good is more or less 
dependent on the nature of his social condition, 
he has more and more permanent sympathies 
than other creatures, which attach him to his 
kind, and prove to his reason that their good is 
inseparable from his own. 

Some individuals whose religion does not con- 
sist in knowing God, or who do not seek to know 
him, in the way that the Religion of the Universe 
directs, describe this life as if it were a state of 
punishment for some bygone transgression ; or as 
if some progenitor of the human race had com- 
municated a moral taint to his descendants, which 
had thrown out upon the world, like the box of 
Pandora, a mass of suffering and woe. 

If this life has not a reference to one antece- 
dent, there are many reasons independent of 
any supernatural communications on the subject 
which induce us to believe that it has a reference 
to one that is to come ; but still it behoves us 



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113 



principally to consider it as a whole in itself. It 
has a beginning, a middle, and an end ; infancy, 
youth, manhood^ decrepitude and old age. This 
is the state of man ; but though it is a whole in 
itself it is morally not a perfect whole. Morally 
it is only part of a whole ; but a part which, like 
the link in a chain, seems visibly complete in 
itself, though the link is of little value when 
severed from the other concatenated parts. When 
we take a moral view of this present life, and con- 
sider it as an insulated whole, many irregularities 
arise and many incongruities are seen. 

A future life, therefore, becomes necessary to 
give order and consistency to the present, and to 
reconcile the ways of God in this world to that 
wisdom and goodness of which we see such in- 
dubitable traces in the portion of the universe 
which we are permitted to behold ! I shall dis- 
cuss the question of a future life more at length at 
the end of the work. 

This present life, according to my view of it, 
has an end in itself and an end beyond it. The 
end in itself requires that the individual should 
make the best use of the means for attaining hap- 
piness that are in his power, and consistently with. 

8 



114 



THE RELIGION OF 



his nature and circumstances. He will practise 
virtue therefore from a right sense of its present 
benefits ; as conducive both to individual and to 
social good ; and in proportion as he regards this 
state of being as relative to one that is to come, 
he will feel the strongest additional motive to lead 
a virtuous life. 

As far as this life is a whole in itself, and is one 
complete link in the great chain of individual 
being, it seems unreasonable to consider it solely 
and exclusively, or even principally with a view to 
an ulterior state of being. If the Deity furnishes 
us with the means of present happiness, it is un- 
grateful not to make use of them, or to suppose 
that there is any virtue in rejecting the proffered 
good, when, in accepting it, no duty is violated, 
and no excess committed. The innocent enjoy- 
ments, both physical and mental, and particularly 
mental, which this world places more or less within 
the reach of every individual, are not temptations 
to wrong, but incentives to good ; which we ought 
temperately to use, and gratefully to enjoy. 

The state of things in which we are living, 
when carefully scrutinised and comprehensively 
viewed, does not inculcate the rigours of abstinence 



THE UNIVERSE. 



115 



but the rationalities of enjoyment. The "Religion 
of the Universe itself, in its very nature and 
essence, constitutes a multiplicity of delights ; but 
more particularly of the higher and intellectual 
kind. For as that religion is the knowledge of 
God, and all the sciences constitute so many parts 
of that knowledge, the acquisition of it must be a 
source of endless gratification. 

The dreams of the visionary seem to enter 
largely into the supposition that w r e are to have 
a short life of suffering here, as the preparatory 
antecedent to an eternity of bliss hereafter. But 
as this life, which is of such brief continuance, 
constitutes one stage or grade of our being, we 
cannot suppose that the next will be of endless 
duration. It is more probable that the state, 
which follows this, will be only another stage or 
step in the scale of our moral and intellectual 
ascent to the knowledge of the Eternal. 

That next step, therefore, in the interminable 
gradations of existence, instead of being a state of 
never-endijig fruition, will be preparatory to some 
other and higher sphere of life. Thus there will 
be a continuity of individual life through an endless 
succession of different states and forms of being. 



116 



THE RELIGION OF 



In every new state and form of being, there will 
be more full and gratifying manifestations of the 
Divine agency and perfections ; so that the mind will 
for ever continue knowing more and more of God, 
without ever coming to that period when no more 
knowledge is to be had, and no further insight into 
the Divine agency and attributes to be obtained. 

The Religion of the Universe teaches us to view 
this life as one stage of our being, leading to other 
and innumerable stages and forms of existence ; 
and not as a probationary state leading to a fixed 
and immutable scene of stationary bliss. The 
popular belief is, that this life of toil and suffering, 
but of short and variable continuance, is to be fol- 
lowed by one of interminable beatitude, at least to 
a certain select portion of the human race. This 
state or region of endless bliss is termed heaven ; 
but of which no one pretends to know the Where. 
If heaven mean the heavens, or the ethereal space, 
we know that that space is occupied by millions 
and millions of suns and worlds ; in which it is 
probable that there are infinite varieties of sentient 
and intellectual beings, all in their separate states, 
and according to their several faculties, anxiously 
seeking to know more and more of that Eternal 



THE UNIVERSE. 



117 



Being, the knowledge of whose agency and 
perfections, constitutes the dignity, the glory and 
happiness of sentient and thinking beings in every 
state and form in the universe. Of that agency 
and those perfections, we cannot know all that is 
to be known, though we should live and think 
and observe for millions of years, and in millions 
of different worlds and states of existence. " Deum 
scire est nihil nescire." 

If instead of this religion, which inculcates such 
enlarged and useful, such elevated and elevating 
views of the Divine wisdom and goodness, we 
descend to the common systems, which having a 
worldly origin, are properly made dependent on 
a worldly interest, we find them teaching that a 
conformity or non- conformity to certain rites and 
forms of adoration, or the adoption or rejection of 
certain dogmatisms, will cause the individual to 
be eternally happy or miserable after death. But, 
what low notions does this excite ! what a 
degrading representation of the wisdom and the 
goodness of the Deity does it exhibit ! Can any 
rational being, who dares to look upwards to the 
heavens, and to exercise his mind in exploring 
the many revelations of the Divine agency and 



118 



THE RELIGION OF 



perfections in the earth, the air, and the ocean, 
believe for one moment that the Eternal has made 
a state of never-ending bliss or woe, dependent 
on such conditions as certain creeds vaunt, or the 
majority of the existing superstitions affirm ? 

The paramount excellence of the Beligion of 
the Universe, compared with all other systems, 
consists in this, that it requires the perpetual 
exercise of the reasoning faculties. Indeed this 
exercise constitutes its vital spirit. Thus it 
quickens instead of paralyzing, elevates instead 
of depressing, the best faculties of the human 
soul. Instead of prompting the mind to acquiesce 
in absurd, irrational, or unmeaning dogmatisms, 
it incites it perpetually to inquire into those in- 
teresting facts out of which arises the inferences 
of scientific truth, and by which human life is 
enlightened, comforted, and adorned. 

Such a religion as that which I have endeavoured 
to delineate, and which I earnestly recommend to 
the favourable attention of my fellow-creatures, 
must, in proportion as it is affectionately embraced, 
and patiently studied, make a perpetual addition 
to the sum of innocent enjoyment. Js~ew truths 
will be perpetually added to the existing stock ; 



THE UNIVERSE. 



119 



and by every new truth, as far as that truth 
enlarges the knowledge of God, a new pleasure is 
introduced into the mind. 

The Eeligion of the Universe furnishes its own 
proofs. We have only to ask, and to have ; to 
seek, and to find ; to look, and to see. With every 
new investigation in the scientific world, new 
revelations of the Divine agency and attributes are 
brought before the mental sight. The evidences, 
therefore, of this religion are cumulative. They 
are pei^etually increasing ; and as they are of 
the Infinite, and appertain to him in his agency 
and attributes, they can never come to an end. 
They are infinite, as is the Being to whom they 
refer. 

The goodness of God is particularly seen in 
giving us so many proofs of his agency, and in 
making the discovery of those proofs so conducive 
to our physical good and our mental delight. 

The more we know of God, the better we must 
understand the constitution of the material and 
intellectual world; for it is through that under- 
standing that the Divine nature is revealed, and 
the Divine perfections known. And the more our 
minds are furnished with this knowledge, the more 



120 



THE RELIGION OF 



materials of genuine, un vitiated enjoyment we must 
have within our reach. Thus we make religion the 
best instrument of present good, and the surest 
means of temporal happiness. 

The Religion of the Universe, therefore, has a 
tendency to promote present good as much as 
future; and hence we have the strongest induce- 
ments to lead a religious life, for its benefits in 
this world, as much as in that which is to come. 

To live, therefore, solely and exclusively with a 
view to a future life, and to be unmindful of the 
present, or to neglect its interests and despise its 
pleasures, as some religionists inculcate, appears 
to me to deduct from the sum of present good, 
without making any addition to that which is to 
come ; for it cannot be too often or too strenuously 
urged, that, if this life be considered as a link in 
the chain of endless being, it is to be regarded 
as a whole in itself; and, of course, that we are, 
under reasonable restriction, to live in it, and for 
it, as if it were the be-all and the end-all of our 
existence. We are to make the best possible use 
of the means and opportunities for good that are 
put in our power, both for ourselves and our fellow- 
creatures. 



THE UNIVERSE. 



121 



We have a double duty to perform as we are 
individual, and as we are social beings. As we are 
social beings, we are placed here, not to live only 
for ourselves, but for others as well as ourselves. 
Their good must be considered in conjunction with 
our own. If we thus think and act, if these are 
the maxims which we follow, and this the course 
of conduct which we pursue, we shall secure 
the greatest good of which this state of being 
is susceptible; and if individual consciousness is 
to have an endless continuity in its transitions 
through an infinity of forms and states of being, 
the consciousness of having done all that a 
reasonable sense of duty requires us to do in 
this present world, must be the best preparative 
for a higher and happier existence in the region 
beyond the grave. The best life in this world, is 
that which is best in the position which we occupy 
in it, and according to the means and oppor- 
tunities of individual and social good, of moral 
and intellectual advancement, which we enjoy ; 
and must not the same life be the best for us in 
the next stage of our being, whatever, and wherever 
it may be ? 

The Religion of the Universe consists -in know- 



122 



THE KELIGION OF 



ing God ; and that knowledge is not a simultaneous 
burst of light, or lights upon the mind, but an 
accumulation of particulars perpetually increasing ; 
and hence it is in conformity with the slow but 
certain intellectual advancement of man. The 
desire of knowing God, or of knowing something 
of the great Author of all that we see, commences 
so early, that it may almost be said to be contem- 
poraneous with the first germ of the reasoning 
faculty. It certainly is an enquiry upon which, 
in some form or other, we enter early, and continue 
long. But, as the world is filled with sacerdotal 
and other established interests in opposition to 
truth, we are soon led into a devious track in the 
investigation ; and instead of light, we find our- 
selves bewildered in darkness. We seek to know 
God, not where he really reveals himself, in the 
diversified phenomena of the universe, where 
reason furnishes the torch to the sanctuary, but 
in some of those supernatural communications 
to which particular bodies of religionists lay 
claim, and the interpretation of which only leads 
to vain logomachies and endless doubts. But the 
Religion of the Universe shows a clearer path and 
a less ambiguous way. It teaches us outwardly 



THE UNIVERSE. 



123 



to mark, and inwardly to contemplate the Divine 
agency in some of its innumerable manifestations 
in the material and intellectual universe. 

Grod does not reveal himself at once to his 
creatures. He does it gradually and slowly ; in 
proportion as their intellectual faculties are more 
and more developed in the study of his works. It 
is this study which furnishes endless exercise for 
the reason ; and when the reason is continually 
and strenuously exercised in the acquisition of this 
knowledge, new and more luminous proofs of the 
Divine wisdom and goodness will be constantly 
multiplying around us. Thus the Religion of the 
Universe, unlike the systems of human contrivance, 
is one growing from darkness to an ever brighter 
light. Where the mind is put upon a right track 
of inquiry, and men are taught to seek Grod where 
alone he is to be seen, in some of his glorious 
works, every day will furnish new and more aston- 
ishing proofs of the wisdom and goodness of the 
Infinite. 

Those who teach the Religion of the Universe to 
the people, will labour to bring the most striking 
truths of all the sciences within the reach of their 
comprehension ; so that the proofs of the Divine 



124 



THE RELIGION OF 



agency, power, wisdom, and goodness, may be 
perpetually before their eyes, and be interwoven 
in the whole tissue of their sentiments. Thus the 
omnipresence of Deity will be continually in their 
thoughts ; their hearts will be warmed with a 
sacred fervour, and elevated to a state of pure 
devotional sublimity, to which they can never be 
raised by the wearisome formularies which con- 
stitute the sum and substance of the predominant 
superstitions. 

Among the sciences, which lead to the know- 
ledge of Grod, and which more particularly reveal 
his agency and attributes, that of the anatomy of 
the human frame will particularly occupy the 
attention of those who are anxious to diffuse and 
to extend the Religion of the Universe. 

In the structure of the human body, such proofs 
may be furnished of the Divine wisdom and good- 
ness, as will make it palpable to sense, and so 
clear as to be seen by the most common under- 
standing. Where the eye, the ear, the hand, 
and the foot, the great organs of seeing, hearing, 
action, and motion, cannot be actually dissected 
before the audience, such perfect models of them 
may be exhibited as will sufficiently elucidate the 



THE UNIVERSE. 



125 



incomparable excellence of the mechanism, and 
impress the mind with the exquisite adaptation of 
that mechanism to the peculiar state, constitution, 
and surrounding influences of the individual. 

How nicely is that wonder of wonders, the 
human eye, adapted, by the Great Optician of 
the universe, to the laws of light, and the ear to 
those of sound ! 

When the human hand is regarded as an in- 
strument for the coarsest and the finest work, — 
work which requires the highest or the lowest 
degree of intellectual superintendence; when we 
consider its adaptation to the innumerably different 
operations to which it can be applied ; when we 
reflect that, under the direction of some invisible 
volition in the brain, it can fabricate those instru- 
ments and machines, by which a sort of miraculous 
power is given to the ordinary faculties of man, 
and with which one feeble hand can do the work 
of thousands, or man's weak sight descry the 
infinite wonders of the ethereal space ; when we 
descant upon such topics, even to the most obtuse 
understanding, are we not likely to make much 
stronger devotional impressions on the heart, and to 
excite a more lively consciousness of the Divine 



126 



THE RELIGION OF 



wisdom in the mind, than we could by reciting 
the marvellous and often self- contradictory narra- 
tives of the Old Testament or the New ? 

When God is thus made known to the generality 
of mankind, the mind and heart will contemplate 
his agency and cherish his perfections, with a 
purity and a strength, because a reasonableness and 
a conviction, that none of the common systems of 
worship, or diversities of superstitious observance, 
can produce. It will then be seen whether re- 
ligious instruction is better communicated, or pure 
religious feelings better excited, by dogmatisms or 
by facts ; whether a metaphysical jargon, the 
jargon of existing ecclesiastical systems, creeds, 
and articles, is a better guide for the people, in all 
that appertains to the substance of religious belief 
and practice, than that physical knowledge which 
the works and laws of the universe so abundantly 
reveal ; by which the reason is invigorated, the 
mind expanded, the affections vivified, and the 
whole individual man, as well as the great fabric 
of society, improved. 

The Religion of the Universe, far above all other 
systems, teaches man to act and think as in the 
presence of God. As it contemplates the Divine 



THE UN1VEKSE. 



127 



agency every where, and describes its various 
revelations in the material universe, from a speck 
of evidence to a broad blaze of light, it impresses 
the consciousness with the strongest conviction of 
the omnipresence of the Deity. 

What other system is there which can vie with 
this, in producing a profound and salutary con- 
viction of the Divine agency in the understanding ? 
What brings it so home to the mind ? How, by 
the formularies of the common systems can such 
innumerable instances of the goodness of God be 
placed before the mind ? 

By making religion to consist in the knowledge 
of God, and by including in that knowledge all 
the truths of all the sciences, we make religion 
itself the most efficient means of enlightening the 
people. Indeed, the Religion of the Universe 
supposes the highest illumination of the mind. 
It is, therefore, incompatible with an ignorant 
people. They cannot be co-existent. 

Wherever the Religion of the Universe prevails, 
the Supreme Mind will be worshipped by the minds 
of all his rational creatures ; and that worship will 
consist in exploring the perfections of the Eternal, 
as they are revealed in the works of the material 



128 



THE RELIGION OF 



world. What can contribute so much, or so effica- 
ciously, to the intellectual advancement of the 
human race ? The first effort in the morning, 
and the last at night, will be to know more of 
Grod. Thus God can never be long absent from 
the thoughts. Such a system must be productive 
of incalculable benefits. It does not, like the ex- 
isting superstitions, require belief without any 
really satisfactory evidence which will stand the 
test of impartial criticism. It furnishes proof of 
all it teaches, and one of a cumulative kind ; it is 
a proof, to which every day will make additions ; 
and every addition must tend to make the Divine 
agency more known, and religious knowledge 
more abundant. 

The social condition of man cannot be so much, 
or so permanently improved, in any other way, 
as by raising him in the intellectual scale ; and 
what can do this by such certain and efficacious 
means, as those which the Religion of the Universe 
recommends ? 

How can it be supposed that man was designed 
by his Maker to remain in his present state of 
physical wretchedness and intellectual degrada- 
tion ? — For what purpose is man, in all states and 



THE UNIVERSE. 



129 



circumstances ; inspired with a desire to improve 
his condition, or to make it better than it is, 
whatever it may be ? Is here not a direct incite- 
ment, to every individual of the human race, to 
endeavour to rise to a higher and higher grade in 
the scale of pleasurable life ? Is not the principle 
of progression the law of the universe ? Does 
not everything relative to the physical and mental 
improvement of the present world, go on in an 
ascending series ? Do not geological facts and 
historical researches conspire to teach us that there 
have been successive creations in the vegetable 
and animal world, one rising above another in 
the grade of usefulness, complexity of structure, 
and multiplicity of functions ? Have not facts 
enough been accumulated, even in the present 
incipient state of geological science, to prove that 
great and mighty changes have taken place in 
this globe, one after another; and that, in those 
changes, new creations have been caused, either 
by the immediate volition of the Deity, or by a 
train of intermediate causation, in the products of 
the earth and the ocean ? Was not the earth in 
one of its primary states, covered with lichens, 
and mosses, and ferns, and cryptogamous plants 



130 



THE RELIGION OF 



of the lower grade in the scale of vegetable life? 
Was there not a period when it was unadorned 
with the multiplicity of flowers and fruits which 
are now every where diffused ? 

Geology, strictly so called, is a science of very 
recent origin ; but there is not one, in the whole 
circle of the sciences, which tells us more of God, 
or tells it in a manner that brings it so much 
within the reach of the human apprehension. It 
accommodates itself, in a particular manner, to 
the imperfect conceptions of man. 

The earth, as has been long and often said, is its 
own historian. It is its own book of Genesis. It 
tells its own history ; and that history is not 
written in an unknown tongue, but in characters 
palpable to human sense, and intelligible to the 
most common understanding. 

The different strata of the earth constitute the 
grand pages of its history. They mark its chrono- 
logical progression, not by single years, but by 
periods of vast extent ; during which mighty 
changes have been wrought, not only in the out- 
ward surface, but in the solid structure of the globe. 

In particular portions of the globe, its produc- 
tions, both vegetable and animal, have been sue- 



THE UNIVERSE. 



131 



cessively changed from marine to earthly, and 
from earthly to marine. Old races have perished, 
and new been produced ; and the creative power, 
which is never quiescent in the great fabric of the 
universe, has been perpetually active in the little 
planetary speck that constitutes the habitation of 
man. 

Geological science proves to demonstration, that 
various creations of animals preceded that of man. 
Man is a more recent creation; and the Infinite 
Spirit, in all His works, seems, if I may so say, to 
pursue a consecutive process ; and slow, but con- 
stant progression, rather than simultaneous com- 
pletion, is the character of His works, not only in 
the physical formation of the earth, but in the 
moral and intellectual growth of the human 
race. 

Does not geological history, in its vast pages 
of stone, and in the gigantic letters of its fossils 
and shells, in its beds of alcyonites and echinites, 
and in the bones of its vast reptiles and quadru- 
peds, its ichthyosauri and plesiosauri, its mastodons 
and mammoths, tell us that a variety of animal 
creations have successively appeared, and perished, 
before the present races of animals were produced, 



132 



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and particularly before man walked upon the earth 
and looked up to the stars ? 

In respect to man himself, there appear to have 
been different creations in different parts of the 
globe. Even of white men has there not been 
more than one creation, with several grades of 
organic energy and mental perfection ? But what- 
ever may be the case with white men, who has 
ever yet furnished indubitable, or completely satis- 
factory proof that black men and white are of the 
same pristine race ? 

The black men seem doomed, according to that 
principle of progression, which is a law of the 
universe, to be ultimately replaced by the white. 
Civilization will ultimately efface the traces of 
barbarism. The movement is begun, and it will 
not cease till it comes to an end. 

In the order of the universe, the cessation of 
races seems as much determined as that of in- 
dividuals. They have a certain destiny to fulfil in 
the affairs of the world ; and, when that has been 
accomplished, other races press upon their steps, 
and they vanish from the scene. If we look at 
what has befallen different portions of the globe, 
even in the pages of written history, we shall find 



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133 



that physical energy and intellectual power have 
propelled the great stream of events, and deter- 
mined the fate of nations. 

The present suffering state of man is very much 
owing to bad and oppressive governments. In 
most countries, governments, forgetful of the true 
end of their institution, act as if the many w^ere 
made for the few. Public good is postponed to 
private ; the interest of the community is sacri- 
ficed to that of individuals. Hence the depression 
of industry and increase of pauperism. This is 
too much the case even under governments where 
a considerable portion of liberty is enjoyed, and a 
regard for the public good commonly professed. 

In Great Britain, at this moment, how many 
axe the interests more or less opposed to the general 
good. How often does wealth, instead of disposing 
men to liberality, only increase their selfish pro- 
pensities ! How inadequate the correlation between 
moral and material civilisation ; so that the priva- 
tions of one class seem to grow with the luxury of 
another ! 

Earth herself is not a harsh task-mistress, who 
exacts wasting toil for scanty remuneration ; 
nor a cruel step-mother, w T ho stints the subsistence, 



134 



THE RELIGION OF 



or is insensate to the necessities of her children. 
She is rather a generous benefactress, and an indul- 
gent parent ; grateful beyond hope, and bountiful 
beyond desert. She makes exuberant plenty the 
recompense of moderate toil ; and tells her indus- 
trious sons that their labour shall not be in vain. 

But man, more hard-hearted than the earth 
from which he springs, causes his fellow-man to 
eat the bread of carefulness and to drink the cup 
of woe. 1 The bad passions of ambition, of avarice, 
and selfishness, infuse poison into the common 
stream of felicity out of which all might take and 
be satisfied. The power centred in a few becomes 
the curse of the many. Governments, the sole 
object of whose institution should be the good of 
all, limit their attention too much, or too exclu- 
sively, to their own good, or that of their im- 
mediate retainers and dependants ; and suffer the 
public welfare to be scattered like chaff to the 
winds. 

Thus, in civilized countries, where there are 

1 This was written prior to the repeal of the corn laws and the 
extension of free trade ; still there remain plenty of shortcomings 
in act and institution, and the ancient Greek identification of 
politics and morals is far from being realised. 



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135 



numerous institutions calculated to promote the 
common happiness, the labouring many often 
experience a severity of want and a multiplicity 
of wretchedness rarely felt even by savages. 

Hume, in the 29 th chapter of his " History of 
England/' gives a true though not a very flatter- 
ing account of the intent and operation of the 
English Church. He describes it as a political 
establishment in which the clergy are bribed by 
endowments into subserviency, and the people 
lulled into drowsy acquiescence by their minis- 
trations. It is, indeed, an immoral discipline, 
founded on the principle of compromise, and 
directed by that of self-interest. Instead of pro- 
tecting the weak and curbing the strong, instead 
of promoting education in the one and respect for 
justice in the other, the religion of most countries 
appears to have no other object than that of 
perpetuating the servility of the many, and the 
domination of the few. 

The Religion of the Universe, whenever it comes 
to be rightly understood, and generally diffused, 
will put an end to this anomalous state of things, 
so contrary to the common happiness, and to that 
progressive improvement in the individual and 



136 



THE RELIGION OF 



social condition of man, wliicli seems most in 
unison with the laws of the Deity in the constitu- 
tion of the world ; and without which the mental 
powers of the human race can never expand to 
their full maturity and strength. The selfish, 
insulated, and corrupt interests of society have 
a direct motive for maintaining the dead status 
quo of old beliefs, which stunts the growth of 
intellect and prevents the diffusion of right moral 
notions among men. The Religion of the Universe, 
which takes reason for its steady support, and 
science for its illuminating guide, is what alone 
can put an end to superstition in all its diversified 
forms and mischievous operations. 

Religion has hitherto been an instrument in the 
hands of priests and governments for the mental 
debasement and the physical oppression of man. 
Ignorance and servility, fraud and crime, the 
benighted mind, and the malignant heart, have 
been its ordinary concomitants and effects in all 
periods of time. How many nations have bent the 
knee to priestly artifice and sacerdotal pride ! 
Sycophants of every kind, and hypocrites of all 
forms, have been her train-bearers and menials in 
all the regions of the globe. Every country under 



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187 



heaven has, by turns, been made a scene of misery 
by the iron violence of the despot, or the insidious 
subtlety of the priest. Nor has the wretchedness 
produced ever been greater than where sceptred 
power has been assisted in its pillage and defended 
in its atrocities by mitred craft. The profession 
of superior sanctity has been employed to abet 
the most mischievous purposes of secular domina- 
tion ; and all sorts of impositions have been prac- 
tised and all sorts of enormities perpetrated under 
the pretence that they had the sanction of the 
Deity. 

Even the mild and gentle, the humble and 
love-breathing religion of the great reformer 
of Nazareth, has been perverted to purposes as 
opposite to those which its benevolent author 
designed, as the sword is to the ploughshare, or 
darkness to light. 

The Religion of the Universe, such as I have 
imperfectly delineated it, can alone put a stop to 
demoralisation by restoring the true spirit and 
original meaning of Christianity, and directing 
man in the true road to knowledge, virtue, and 
happiness. 

Men are apt to magnify the past at the expense 



138 



THE RELIGION OF 



of the present. They depreciate what they see 
before them, to extol the worth of that which they 
have never known. Envy and the baser passions 
combine with ignorance and superstition to gene- 
rate this turn of mind ; and to make the imagina- 
tion dwell on the fancied splendours of the past, 
rather than to rejoice in the prospect of the bliss 
that is to come. 

But that principle of progression, which is 
attached to the system of the universe, and con- 
stitutes the spirit of modern philosophy, bids us 
look onward to the illuminating dawn, rather than 
backward to the departed ray. 

Existence is a drama, in which there is new 
interest and new hope in every coming scene. 
But few pages of the great book of nature have 
yet been opened ; and those that are yet to be 
unclosed will make the past fade in the contrast, 
and darken to the view. 

Old men delight to recount the wonders of their 
youth ; and existing generations seem to have 
a similar pleasure in depicting the marvels and 
felicities of a bygone age. But the first records 
of time and temporal things, as far as they are 
preserved, not in the fallacious traditions of man, 



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139 



but in the certain evidence of the globe itself, in 
its lands and seas, in its rocks, and shells, and 
bones, in its earliest products and primary remains, 
indicate that the first state of existence, or the 
primeval condition of the earth itself was not one 
of peace but of strife ; not of long tranquillity, but 
of constant agitation ; not a period of blissful re- 
pose, but of convulsive turbulence, of awful change 
and dire vicissitude ; and it is out of a scene of 
confusion and misery? that a better state of things 
is to be successively developed, and progressively 
perfected, till, metaphorically speaking, a new 
heaven and a new earth shall be revealed to 
mortal view. 

Instead of the golden age having ever been, it is 
yet to be. Elysium is still to come. The cur- 
tain that is to disclose a scene undefaced by 
pauperism and wretchedness, is yet to be drawn 
aside. The early dreams of poets about the hap- 
piness of the past will be realized in the future. 

The time is yet to come, but come it will, 
when, at least metaphorically, the wolf will lie 
down with the lamb, and the tiger will play 
harmlessly with the child ; when everything 
noxious and venomous shall be removed from 



140 



THE RELIGION OF 



the face of the earth ; when peace and harmony 
shall pervade the globe ; and when the social 
institutions of man shall receive their highest 
possible improvement, and truth and justice uni- 
versally prevail. 

But this very desirable amelioration in the 
moral and political state of man cannot be effected 
till nations shall no longer prostrate themselves 
under the barbarising yoke of sacerdotal domina- 
tion, till the old theological systems, which are 
already wearing out, shall have fallen into total 
disuse ; and the Religion of the Universe shall 
be diffused over the whole intellectual globe. 

Though we should pass through twenty different 
states of intellectual being, and during thousands 
of years, and should, all that time, be employed 
in investigating the Divine agency and perfections, 
we should still have no more than a dim and 
imperfect conception of the Deity. Our notions 
of the Infinite would still be a very inadequate 
representation of his attributes. Nothing but 
omniscience can know the Omniscient. But 
though, as finite beings, we can never have more 
than an imperfect conception of the Deity, it be- 
hoves us to labour incessantly, to obtain continually 



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141 



wider and clearer views of his operations both 
within us and without. For in that knowledge con- 
sists the excellence of our nature ; and the more we 
acquire of it, the higher we rise in the intellectual 
scale. The Religion of the Universe thus requires 
the constant exercise of the rational faculties ; and 
hence it tends continually to increase our pro- 
ficiency in virtue and knowledge. 

Instead of enjoining prayers and supplications, 
or ceremonials of adoration, which soon degenerate 
into mere forms, and only seem to multiply 
hypocrites, or to substitute the show for the 
reality of holiness, the Religion of the Universe 
enjoins its votaries to spare no effort, and to omit 
no opportunity in discovering the perfections of 
the Deity in his works. The teachers of that 
religion will make those perfections, as they are 
thus revealed in the great book of the creation, 
the constant theme of their discourse. 

The moral and intellectual improvement of the 
people will thus be more effectually secured, and 
more rapidly accelerated than it can ever be in the 
common mode of religious instruction, or by any 
of the ancient formularies of religious adoration. 
What is called the house of God should be the 



142 



THE RELIGION OF 



temple of science ; and as all the sciences, more or 
less, reveal the Divine agency, and exemplify the 
Divine laws, religions instruction ought to be 
principally of a scientific character. For as all 
religion consists in the knowledge of God, and as 
that knowledge comprehends every truth which 
the whole material and intellectual world is calcu- 
lated to reveal, it will behove the teachers of such 
a religion to make as many of those truths as 
possible clear to the most ordinary understanding ; 
and thus to impress every individual, even in the 
most humble sphere, with a hallowed sense of 
the Divine agency and perfections, Every day- 
labourer and mechanic, who repaired to the sanc- 
tuary, where such instruction was given and such 
truths taught, and particularly when illustrated by 
striking experiments, would find his mind edified 
and his heart improved. 

When religion is made to consist of stated cere- 
monials and liturgic forms, it must, sooner or 
later become a piece of worthless mummery and 
empty show. No employment is given to the 
intellect. The spirit of investigation is repressed, 
instead of being excited ; and the intellectual 
faculties are discarded from the service of the 



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143 



sanctuary. But in proportion as the Eeligion of 
the Universe is diffused over the world, a new 
and better order of things will prevail. The 
Infinite mind will be mentally adored. His agency, 
which is every where seen, will every where be the 
object of reverential meditation. 

Hence a state of mind will be produced, over 
which a living piety will preside ; where the feelings 
of humble resignation to the Divine government 
will never be absent from the heart ; and where 
the individual will be so deeply impressed with a 
proper sense of the Infinite wisdom and goodness, 
that he will not presume to controvert any of his 
decrees, or to offer up prayers to avert or alter 
any of his judgments. 

The substitution of prayers and supplications 
for acts and habits, for I10I3- deeds and devout 
states of mind, has been very much occasioned by 
the common tendency, in the first stage of human 
culture and the early infancy of the human race, 
to anthropomorphise the Deity. We know, that 
by prayers and importunities we can often prevail 
on a man, like ourselves, to change his mind, to 
revise his schemes, and alter his determinations ; 
and we fondly imagine that similar entreaties and 



144 



THE RELIGION OF 



invocations will not be without a like influence on 
the mind of a humanized Divinity. 

TTe thus reduce the Infinite to the finite. Yfe 
temporise the Eternal, and debase the idea of the 
Omnipotent with many of our own imperfections 
and infirmities. The Heathens make gods out of 
wood and stone ; and we, hardly less idolatrous, 
carve them into our ovrn likeness, after our low 
conceptions, our gross and terrene imaginations. 

What is this but mental idolatry ? Is it not 
setting up a god in the mind, fashioned after our 
own vain imaginations ? This mental idolatry is 
as rife in our times as the corporeal was in those 
of the Heathen world. But whether we worship 
an idol of thought, or one of clay, whether we 
adore a misrepresentation of Deity in the mind, 
or bend the knee to one made of wood or stone, 
whether we prostrate ourselves before a b§in°: 

-«- o 

called into existence by the metaphysician and 
fashioned into a creed; or fabricate an object of 
worship by the coarse hand of the carpenter, or 
the more refined skill of the statuary, we are 
equally guilty of idolatry. The second command- 
ment, in the strict spirit and tendency of the pro- 
hibition, is as much violated by the Church of 



THE UNIVERSE. 



145 



England, in its formularies, as it was by the 
Jews, when they made the molten calf. 

Mental idolatry seems indeed to rival the corpo- 
real in the extent of its influence and the number 
of its adherents. In this sense of the word, and 
with this explanation of idolatrous worship, I am 
convinced that all the churches of Christendom lie 
as much under the imputation of idolatry as the 
temples of Egypt, or Greece, or Eome. They 
worship ideal disfigurements of the Divine essence 
and attributes in creeds and dogmas, which outrage 
the dictates of reason, and are adverse to the best 
sentiments of piety. 

The church of England offends in this respect 
as often, though not as grossly, as the other 
churches of Christendom. In her liturgic forms, 
her variegated dogmatisms, and her discordant 
creeds, her mental idolatry is palpably displayed 
in numerous gross conceptions, or rather mis- 
conceptions, of the Divine nature and character. 

The Religion of the Universe is equally adverse 
to both idolatries, the mental and the corporeal ; 
that of the thoughts in their fanciful combinations, 
and that of the grosser and more palpable deline- 
ations of the Eternal in material forms. 

10 



146 



THE RELIGION OE 



If the Deity were as finite and imperfect a 
being, as limited in his views and as mutable in 
his resolves, as some theologians seem to think, 
and some formularies of worship would lead us to 
suppose, we might well imagine that he would be 
willing, now and then, to suspend or alter his 
providential schemes. But, if enlightened reason 
can teach us anything of the Infinite, it is 
that he must be just, benevolent, and immu- 
table in all his determinations. What he wills 
he wills once and for ever. There is no vari- 
ableness nor even shadow of turning in him. 
As he is infinite in all his attributes, his will as 
it respects us must be benevolent, however it may 
appear the contrary in its immediate influence and 
effects ; and for us therefore to pray him to alter 
his will or change his purpose is at once a mark 
of folly and impiety ; a continuation of the old 
ideas of magical religion in spite of opportunities 
of better knowledge. It is, in fact, to suppose 
that the Deity is not infinite in wisdom and good- 
ness. To ask the Infinite to do what we wish, 
rather than what he intends, is to doubt whether 
he knows what is best for us, as well as we do 
ourselves. 



THE UNIVERSE. 



147 



To hold communion with. God is one of the 
highest privileges of our nature; but the best, 
most purifying, and exalting communion, which 
we can hold with the Eternal, is in endeavouring 
to execute his will, and in hallowed meditation 
on his agency and perfections, as they are re- 
vealed to us, more and more, and in a greater 
multiplicity of particulars, in those wonders of the 
universe that are open to our view, or within the 
reach of our investigations. 

The objects of religious faith and contemplation 
are necessarily mysterious ; God, freedom, the 
human soul, lie far beyond the measurements 
of the senses or even the reach of imagination. 
But there is another class of mysteries, namely, 
those which have been artificially created by 
human ingenuity in order to express certain para- 
doxes accidentally occurring to the theological 
mind ; affirmations about various abstruse matters 
which it is wholly unnecessary to believe, even 
were it possible to do so consistently with the due 
exercise of the understanding. Such dogmatisms 
make a conspicuous feature in the creeds and 
religious establishments of the day ; and they are 
precisely the parts of such creeds and establish- 



148 



THE RELIGION OF 



ments which their crafty champions are most 
earnest to praise and to defend. The most obscure 
and nonsensical propositions are those which most 
readily engage the assent of the mercenary and 
the homage of the credulous. 

If any great merit is imputed to the observance 
of particular rites or ceremonies, or if the favour 
of the Deity is affirmed to be attached to that 
observance, those rites and ceremonies will be 
observed with superlative scrupulosity; and the 
observance will be considered as a substitute for 
more useful duties and higher obligations. This 
substitution prevails widely, and constitutes no 
small part of the actual bewilderments of the 
religious world. The simple faith and worship of 
rational religion seem impious and atheistic to 
those whose theory and practice are so much more 
complicated and ostentatious. 

The best species of public worship is that in 
which the Divine agency is generally acknow- 
ledged and luminously explained in the laws and 
works of the intellectual and material universe. 
This is to hold communion with God in that way 
which tends most to manifest his perfections, and 
to promote our own improvement. Many of the 



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149 



present formularies of public worship are at 
variance with, reason, and inconsistent with the 
purposes of genuine piety. 

E^en Christ, in his early day, 1 anticipated a 
period when the worship of the Deity in stated 
formularies and local sanctuaries would be aban- 
doned ; and when better and purer notions of the 
Infinite Spirit would so generally prevail as to re- 
place a gross and formal, by a more spiritual and 
intellectual adoration. " The time is coming/ 5 
He said, "when neither in this mountain nor at 
Jerusalem shall ye worship the father. God is 
a spirit ; and they that worship must worship 
him in spirit and in truth. 55 But can God be 
worshipped in spirit and in truth except through 
an intellectual and moral medium ? This is the 
medium in which the Religion of the Universe 
prescribes that public worship should be per- 
formed, and the Infinite adored. 

Most really and truly then do we worship God 
when we labour assiduously to obtain a compre- 

1 Whether these words were really uttered by Christ, or not, 
they contain an indisputable truth quite in harmony with the 
spirit which simplified the form of prayer and disdained prostra- 
tions to his person unaccompanied by compliance with his wilL 



150 



THE UELIGION OF 



faensive knowledge of his will, and make his per- 
fections, as far as humanity will permit, the object 
of our daily, hourly, and incessant imitation. 

Most of the prayers addressed to the Deity by 
existing priests and their congregations are only 
so many vain words, in which there is as little of 
the illumination of reason as of the aspirations of 
holiness. The Deity worshipped, or rather pre- 
tended to be worshipped, is composed of very gross 
materials ; he is at least a mental idol of such a 
nature that he may be propitiated by outward 
observances and wearisome forms. 

If prayer to the Deity does not suppose him 
a capricious, it at least supposes him a mutable 
being. It humanizes his nature; and what be- 
comes of his infinite wisdom and goodness, if a 
shortsighted and erring mortal can, by any en- 
treaties or importunities, induce him to alter his 
decrees ? To pray to Grocl to do what cannot con- 
duce to our well-being, or not to do what he knows 
to be beneficial, if it be not impiety, is only a waste 
of time and of effort that might be better employed. 

AYe often waste our time in praying for those 
things which God has given us the faculties to 
acquire. What is this but an act of disobedience 



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151 



to the Author of our nature, and to the Maker of 
the universe ? We make prayers a pretext for 
inactivity and indolence. We substitute vain 
words for worthy acts. Are we not endued with 
reason to teach us that virtue is our interest and 
vice our bane ? Instead, therefore, of offering up 
supplications for the one or against the other, is 
it not more consistent with the precepts of true 
religion to labour energetically to acquire good 
habits, and to eradicate bad ; to make goodness 
the great object of pursuit ; and to avoid sin as 
we would a viper in our path ? 

Mental or physical labour is, more or less, the 
condition of all men. It is one of the necessities of 
the world ; but then it is a necessity out of which 
spring the glory, the elevation, and the felicity of 
man. But man, instead of imitating the wise 
Ulysses in the Odyssee, who clings to his raft 
until absolutely compelled to resort to supernatural 
means of preservation, resembles the unenlightened 
Indian, who prefers to endure poverty and pesti- 
lence in prayerful resignation, rather than under- 
take the exertion necessary to get rid of them. 

To endeavour to procure that by supplication, 
which we have the faculty given us to obtain by 



152 



THE RELIGION OF 



labour and toil, seems as if we expected God to 
work miracles, in order to counteract his own 
previous purposes and benevolent determinations. 
If, by stretching out our hand, we can take the 
fruit from the tree, why should we supplicate the 
genius of the place to bring it to our lips ? In- 
stead of sitting down in despair by the side of the 
road, and entreating Hercules to lift the cart out 
of the rut, do not even children know that it 
behoves us rather to apply our own shoulders to 
the wheel ? The constitution of the world was not 
designed to encourage idleness, or to induce us 
to substitute prayer for industry, or devotional 
fervors and hypocritical genuflections for manual 
and mental toil. 1 

Even of the different forms of thanksgiving the 
best is that which evinces the reality of gratitude 
by acts of goodness to our fellow-creatures. "When 
a good man receives any signal blessing, or is 
favoured with any extraordinary felicity, the 
first impulse of his heart is to make some other 
bosom besides his own participate in the happi- 
ness which he enjoys, and share the pleasurable 



See Appendix (a) . 



THE UNIVERSE. 



153 



emotions felt by himself. This is to have a truly 
grateful and devotional state of the mind and 
heart towards God. 

The Religion of the Universe does not consist so 
much in devotional forms, as in pious acts ; not so 
much in splendid rituals as in intellectual research; 
not so much in dogmatisms that bewilder the 
mind, as in those scientific truths that render it 
clear in its conceptions, luminous in its views, and 
correct in its judgments. Thus it consecrates the 
mind and the heart to God. By making religion 
consist in the knowledge of his agency and in the 
study of his perfections, it worships the Infinite 
through the medium of the understanding. It 
dedicates to the Almighty Giver the noblest of 
his gifts. It does not serve him with desponding 
looks, uplifted hands, and crouching knees, but 
with a heart, enlivened with cheerfulness, and 
warmed with gratitude, by the contemplation of 
his beneficence ; while it is elevated and enlarged 
bv the manifestations of his asrencv and attributes 
in the air, the ocean, and the earth. 

The Religion of the Universe considers this 
world as an intellectual school, in which, indi- 
viduals are incited to acquire that knowledge of 



154 



THE RELIGION OF 



the Divine agency and laws compared with the 
importance of which all other wisdom is nothing 
but foolishness. 

The Religion of the Universe does not consider 
this earth as the final destiny, the last abode of 
man, where his life begins and ends never to 
return — No; that religion teaches us that there 
are millions and millions of worlds, and innumer- 
able gradations and states of intellectual being 
besides the present ; and that the present is only 
one step in the never-ending ascent to a higher 
and higher, to a more and more glorious, pure and 
incorruptible state of existence. 

The world might have been so contrived by the 
Supreme Disposer as to be illumined without any 
visible sun, moon, or stars. It might have been 
placed in a self-illumined medium ; in which man 
might have been ignorant of all those celestial 
phenomena, some of which he now sees with his 
naked eye, and an infinite number of which the 
telescope brings within his view. On that hypo- 
thesis, if death, in all its uncertainties of time and 
place, had been as it now is the lot of man, he 
might have meditated, as he now does, on the 
instability of human life, and the fallacy of human 



THE UNIVERSE. 



155 



hope. But, could he have had the same cheering 
expectation of a future state ? Might it not then 
have been said, "This is the only habitation of 
man." "You see no world beyond this." And 
as none other could have been proved by physical 
vision or astronomical science, the argument in 
favour of some happier futurity of being, would 
have wanted much of its present cogency of proof, 
and all its splendour of illustration. 

But, in the actual state of things, when we be- 
hold the sun by day, and the several planets with 
the innumerable stars, single and double, cluster- 
ing and nebulous, by night, we have as complete 
and satisfactory proof as man can need, or reason 
can require, that creation is without bounds ; and 
that series after series of intelligent beings, in 
endless succession, may have interminable changes 
of local habitation, suited to their character and 
habits, not only during a definite portion of time, 
but for ever and ever. 

It has long been remarked that man's aspect 
indicates his destiny. He is made to look upward. 
His corporeal frame is of the earth, earthly ; but 
his intellectual nature belongs to a higher sphere. 
His eye was organised to see, and his mind to 



156 



THE RELIGION OF 



contemplate the heavens, that the probabilities of 
another and a happier existence might warm his 
imagination, enliven his hopes, enlarge his pros- 
pects, and cheer his heart. 

As no one can set any definite limits to the per- 
fectibility of the human mind, and as astronomical 
science teaches us that there are other worlds be- 
sides this ; the transition of individuals from one 
state of existence to another may go on to an in- 
terminable extent. More and more sources of 
knowledge will thus be opened to the view ; and 
more and more of the works of the Great Creator 
be developed to the intellectual sight. The human 
mind will thus be more and more imbued with 
the wisdom and initiated in the perfections of the 
Divine. 

He who dedicates his mind and heart to the 
Religion of the Universe, will labour assiduously 
to know God, conscious that the knowledge of 
God, rightly explained, diligently cultivated and 
affectionately cherished here will certainly lead to 
a brighter and more extensive view of his adorable 
nature hereafter. 

In the truly mental service and intellectual 
adoration which the Religion of the Universe 



THE UNIVERSE. 



157 



prescribes, its votaries will hold continual com- 
munion with God. His perfections will never be 
long absent from their thoughts and meditations. 
They will be ever present to their consciousness 
in its waking hours ; and when religion is made 
an intellectual exercise, innumerable are the forms 
of beauty and loveliness, and the lessons of an 
edifying and consolatory nature, in which it will 
present itself to the mind and captivate the 
imagination. 

. All other religions, compared with this, are low 
and abject ; unworthy the great author of our 
being, and of no benefit to his creatures. And, 
indeed, if these religions be investigated in their 
sources and meaning, they will all be found to 
have been similar in their original destination to 
represent some phase or conception of the Religion 
of the Universe, and to have gradually degenerated 
through the too reverential perpetuation of an ill- 
understood symbolism into something practically 
absurd and obsolete. 

History thus holds up to us a mirror in which 
we may see reflected both the true essence of all 
religion, and the evanescent puerility of many of 
the cherished conceptions of it ; we may see, for 



158 



THE RELIGION OF 



instance, in the speech, of Stephen, reported in the 
Acts, how the Jewish tabernacle was originally 
intended to symbolise the temple of the universe, 
and may read in the Book of Wisdom, in Philo- 
Judseus and Josephus, how the better educated 
among the later Jews strove to accommodate the 
anomalous narratives of the Old Testament to 
higher ideas by means of allegorical interpretation. 

If human nature is to be perfected, or, if not per- 
fected, to be raised, both morally and intellectually, 
far above its present low estate of ignorance and 
superstition, it can only be accomplished by for- 
saking the present corrupt and corrupting religious 
systems, and by devoting the whole heart and mind 
to the Religion of the Universe. This is what 
alone can establish a salutary and purifying 
theocracy in the heart. 

In opposing the opinions of ages and the prac- 
tice of millions, a man must be blind if he did 
not see that he should have to stand the taunts, 
the revilings, and the imprecations, of the most 
implacable adversaries. Where truth is not a 
primary object of reverence, reason speaks in vain. 
The minds of such persons are impenetrable to 
argument ; and they would be insensible to the 



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159 



gentle influences of charity, even if charity could 
speak to them in the music of the spheres. 

Error and falsehood are a lucrative trade ; and 
he who sets his face against them, more par- 
ticularly when they are dressed in a religious 
garb, and are associated with sacred solemnities, 
must expect to be assailed by the most bitter 
hostility and the most infuriated malevolence. 

No prejudices are so strong as those which fasten 
themselves on mystic obscurities and religious 
dogmatisms. In mathematics and the abstract 
sciences, men prefer light to darkness ; plain words 
to enigmatical expressions. But, in religion, they 
seem to think darkness preferable to light ; and 
vague, indefinite, and unmeaning phrases, to clear, 
distinct, and intelligible terms. 

Intolerance, at the same time, when it embodies 
itself in a religious sentiment, is of the most 
ferocious kind. It suppresses all the better 
sympathies of our nature, and hardens the heart 
against the charities of ordinary life. 

In this work I do not argue against the tenets 
of one set of religionists more than another. 
Their creeds and articles, their mysteries and 
dogmatisms, make no part of my system. I 



160 



THE RELIGION OF 



view tliem as chaff to be scattered to the winds, 
or cobwebs to be brushed from the wall of the 
temple, that the sanctuary may be hallowed for 
the adoration of the Eternal. 

My object is not to pull down one sect, and 
set up another ; but to intellectualize religion 
itself, to make it a mental service worthy of 
reasoning man, and the most fit to be offered to an 
omniscient God. 

The religion here inculcated, is that which 
incites its votaries, above all other things, to 
labour to know God ; which does not measure 
the piety of individuals by the number of 
prayers they say, by the fasts they observe, the 
communions they celebrate, or the sabbatical 
rigours and devotional austerities which they 
practise ; but by the insight which they acquire 
into the perfections of the Deity, and the know- 
ledge they obtain of his agency in the innumerable 
wonders of the universe. 

The innumerable wonders with which the 
Religion of the Universe abounds, and which 
its teachers will hereafter be strenuously em- 
ployed in bringing within the level of popular 
apprehension, will be found to be greatly superior, 



THE UNIVERSE. 



161 



in the interest which they are calculated to excite, 
and in the sentiments of admiration and of 
reverence which they are fitted to produce, to 
all the supernatural narratives which have had 
their origin in the pious frauds or the credulous 
propensities of any by- gone age. 

The religion, of which I have been advocating 
the truth and enumerating the benefits, is 
neither Whig nor Tory, neither High Church 
nor Low Church, neither Catholic nor Protestant, 
neither Episcopalian nor Presbyterian ; and, of 
course, it will not be liable to be internally dis- 
turbed by polemical strifes and doctrinal feuds. 
True religion, that religion which best developes 
the knowledge of the Eternal in the mind, and 
hangs up the lamp of science in the sanctuary, 
is of no sect or country. The author is God, and 
its temple is the universe. 

A national education has long been the wish of 
philosophers ; but, according to the scheme which 
is developed in this work, the Religion of the 
Universe will itself supply that defect, and supply 
it so as to enlarge its benefits to a great and, 
indeed, incalculable extent. By the scheme which 
is here very earnestly, but I fear very inadequately, 

11 



162 



THE RELIGION OF 



recommended, people will continue to be educated 
long after they have left school ; for it will watch 
over their mental improvement in every year of 
their lives, from the dawn of intellect to the in- 
nocent gaiety of childhood, to its setting ray in the 
dying hour. Its object is to educate men, not only 
for time, but for eternity ; and to impress them 
with a never-ceasing reverence for the Great Author 
of their being, and the Father of the universe. 

Of the two revelations which have been asso- 
ciated with Judaism, and which have exercised 
such a long and paramount influence over the 
religious opinions of the European world, the light 
of the first may be said to be extinct ; and that of 
the second is fast going out. They may be reck- 
oned among those productions of human wisdom 
which were wanted in the primary exigences of 
society, which corrected some great immediate 
evil, or promoted some temporary benefit ; but 
which, not strictly harmonizing with the great 
and eternal views of the Creator in the moral and 
intellectual advancement of his rational creatures, 
are destitute of the only true principle of inter- 
minable duration, and are consequently doomed 
to vanish in length of days. 



THE UNIVERSE, 



163 



Religious creeds, even the most obstinately un- 
yielding among them, are not absolutely change- 
less. They wear the semblance of truth for a 
time ; but being destitute of essential and entire 
reality, they ultimately pass, like other perishable 
figments of opinion, into the irremeable stream 
that runs into the gulf of oblivion. 

But the religion, of which I am the sincere but 
humble advocate, is illuminated and confirmed, 
not merely by one or two, but by numerous and 
increasing revelations of the Divine agency and 
perfections, contained in the assemblage of the 
Creator's works ; and which are so contrived as to 
be more and more unfolded to the mental sight 
in proportion as they are more and more the 
object of intellectual research. They were de- 
signed from the beginning of time to enlighten 
man in his progress through life ; to stimu- 
late his noblest faculties to their highest inten- 
sity of effort by the recompense of great tem- 
poral benefits; and above all by furnishing the 
mind with that evidence of the Divine perfections 
which is not only a pure source of solace in the 
present, but a light that leads through the tran- 
sient scene around us to the hope of the inter- 



164 



THE KELIG10K" OF 



minable future. Here we have the best antago- 
nistic influence to that chilling and gloomy scepti- 
cism which depresses the spirits with a deep 
melancholy, and bewilders the thoughts in an 
endless maze. 

It may well be inferred from several intimations 
in the Gospel that Christ had entered upon the 
same track of enquiry, 1 and would have arrived 
at the same conclusions, if the light of the present 
age had dawned upon his mind, and thrown 
a wider field of observation before his view. 
To the reformation of Judaism, which he projected 
in the emancipation of his countrymen from the 
ritual yoke, he would probably have added more 
ample explanations of his meaning out of the 
abundant materials that are every where to be 
found in the moral, the intellectual, and the 
material universe. He would have seen that 
such teaching, instead of being confined to 
general axiomatic outlines is susceptible of in- 
finite illustration, and contains in itself the 
principle of never ending progress. 

The great reformer looked to what was vital 



^ Matthew vi. 26-29 ; xy. 13. Luke xii. 24-27, 



THE UNIVERSE. 



165 



and essential. He compressed the sum and sub- 
stance of true religion into fewer words and a 
smaller space than any of those who preceded him, 
" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
soul, and thy neighbour as thyself." The two 
words love and goodness, — love in the soul, and 
goodness in the life — contain the simple essence 
and fructifying germ of all religion. To know 
God is to love Him ; and this love must be 
cherished and perfected in increasing knowledge 
and in the practical expansion of kindly affection 
and social sympathy, until the feeling of self 
becomes merged in love of the whole sentient 
world. 

The duration of such a faith is as fixed as the 
globe itself ; and its light as durable as that of 
the stars in the firmament. It cannot come to 
an end ; for it partakes of the eternity of the 
Eternal. 



PART II. 



ADDITIONAL REFLECTIONS ON A FUTURE STATE, 

Every religion which does not include a future 
life 1 in its scheme, must be imperfect in itself and 
inadequate to its end. The great end of religion 
is to teach men to know God, and by means of 
that knowledge to make them wise, good and 
happy ; and a belief in a future life must con- 
tribute powerfully to that end, by the increased 



1 This part of the work was written more than sixteen years ago ; 
and was designed with other papers, to form a supplement to Paley's 
Natural Theology. But the stormy proceedings against the late 
Queen Caroline, in the year 1820, during which the author offici- 
ated as her secretary, and was constantly occupied in writing 
answers to the numerous addresses which she received from a 
sympathising people, directed his mind at the time to other subjects, 
and gave a new turn to his intellectual pursuits. Part of what he 
had then previously written on the great question of a future life, 
is here printed, as the author thought that it might tend to 
dissipate the doubts of some, and to give additional strength to the 
belief of others. The moral arguments on the subject are the most 
forcible; and it is hoped that some of those, which are urged 
in the course of the present work, will be found to be 
generally satisfactory, if not entirely incontrovertible. 



THE UNIVERSE. 



167 



sanction which it gives to moral rules, and by the 
animating encouragement which it holds out to 
their habitual observance. 

In the following pages I have treated the subject 
more at length than was consistent with the plan 
of the former part of this work ; and I trust that 
what is here said upon the subject will be conso- 
latory to those who do not look for arguments in 
favour of this great truth in the improbabilities of 
miraculous interposition. J^o completely satis- 
factory solution of the great enigma ever has 
been or probably can be given ; but whatever 
intimations in regard to it the divine wisdom has 
been pleased to bestow, and man is fitted to receive, 
may be discovered by other means, and are com- 
municated in a simpler and more credible way. 

Many considerations conspire to teach us that 
the scene in which every individual moves, and 
within which his agency is circumscribed, is only 
a link in the great chain of being ; and that there- 
fore a continuation of it after death may reasonably 
be expected. 

Man cannot attain to the highest eminence of 
which he is capable in the moral scale, when selfish 
and temporary considerations form the sole prin- 



168 



THE RELIGION OF 



ciple of his conduct. If no sentiment of the 
eternal and universal has a place in his heart, his 
character, instead of being lofty, generous, and 
upright, is more likely to be of the sordid and 
grovelling kind. 

Even an eternity of posthumous fame, though 
only an imaginary good, and a phantom which 
most eludes the grasp as we make the nearest 
approach to its acquisition, has been found to 
energize the mind and to sublime the affections, 
more than any principle of action which centres in 
some present enjoyment or some sectdar interest. 
What has so much inflamed the ardour of genius, 
and invigorated the exertions of intellect ? "What 
has induced so many noble minds to deprive them- 
selves of rest in the night and of pleasure in the 
day ? The reward which genius most covets is 
imperishable fame. Indeed, in proportion as the 
conceptions are more grand and elevated, what is 
temporary, fugitive, and evanescent, ceases to be 
an object of desire. 

What is it which God designed, when he gave 
existence to a succession of rational beings like the 
human race ? Could it be anything else than the 
happiness of all the individuals of which it is com- 



THE UNIVERSE. 



169 



posed ? But if such be the design of Providence in 
the formation of man, is it completely carried into 
effect ? Are there not many individuals, whose lives 
are only a tissue of misery and distress ? Does not 
this indicate that, if happiness be the design 
with which, and the end for which, man was 
created, there must be a future state of existence 
in which that design will be accomplished, and 
that end made manifest ? 

The hypothesis^ of a future life seems as essential 
to the beauty and harmony of the moral system of 
the world, as the sun is to illuminate the expanse 
of the material universe. 

When we see so much beauty and order and 
fitness, in the world, intermingled with so many 
sadly anomalous cases of deformity, confusion, 
discord, and incongruity, and find that this all 
vanishes the moment the mind takes a future life 
into its view of the present, considering one as 
intimately connected with the other, are we not 
fairly tempted to infer that a supposition 
so requisite to give harmony and consistency 
to our moral notions, and to perfect our ideas 
of the Divine goodness, must be true ? Con- 
sidered in this light, a future life is not an 



170 



THE RELIGION OF 



accidental appendage to the system, but an 
essential part of it. If there be a moral govern- 
ment of the world, the force of the whole must 
hinge on a future life. For if there be no future 
life, morality must be founded rather on secular 
motives and temporary results than on eternal 
obligation. But if there be a scheme of moral 
order and fitness in the world, as there certainly 
is of physical order and fitness, then a future life is 
demonstrated ; for it is necessary not merely to the 
completion but to the existence of such a scheme. 1 
The universe does not appear to furnish a single 
instance of annihilation. There is change of form 
but no annihilation of substance. Not a particle 
of any body, whether it be vegetable or animal, a 
blade of grass, or the wing of a fly, is ever reduced 
to a state of nonentity. It is never totally effaced 
from the material world. It is never annihilated. 
— It may undergo infinite changes ; but it still 
exists. 

If this be true of all material things, can we 
suppose that intellectual natures alone are formed 
to be destroyed. When not a particle of a 



1 See Appendix (b). 



THE UNIVERSE. 



171 



mushroom can be reduced to nothingness, shall 
thinking entities alone be doomed to annihilation ! 
If God has so arranged the system of the universe, 
as to perpetuate the subordinate part of his works, 
will he suffer the more noble and important to 
perish for ever ? If he gives indestructibility 
to everv material molecule, will he deny it to 
the human mind, which he has endued with 
the faculty of investigating his own nature and 
perfections ? Does this seem at all probable ; or 
can it, in any way, be reconciled to his wisdom 
and goodness ? 

Can we believe that what has once existed in 
the Divine mind will not exist for ever ? To 
suppose the contrary, is to suppose that there are 
perceptions in that mind which having been may 
cease to be. But do the perceptions of God exist 
in succession ? Does one efface another ? Are 
they not rather simultaneous, unchangeable, and 
everlasting ? But if, to be an .object of the Divine 
perception, is to exist ; and if what has been once 
thus perceived, can never cease to be, how can 
any creature in the universe ever be annihilated ? 
As every molecule of matter must exist for ever 
notwithstanding all the changes of form and 



172 



THE RELIGION OF 



appearance which, it may undergo, so every sentient 
and intellectual being must have a perpetuity of 
life, whatever may be the variety of circumstances 
through which it may pass. 

Man has an appetite for immortality. The 
desire is so universal, as almost to deserve the 
epithet of instinctive, It is true that it is not 
confined merely to persons of cultivated minds ; 
it is common both to the literate and the illiterate, 
to the savage and the sage. The desire, therefore, 
if not instinctive, is at least so far natural, that 
that bosom in which it is not felt must be regarded 
as a sort of anomaly to the general disposition and 
character of mankind. But, God never gives an 
appetite which has not some certain end or object, 
so that the desire of immortality, must, from the 
universality of its operation, be in some measure 
considered as an evidence of the state to which it 
is impelled, and of the eternity for which it 
sighs. 

It will naturally be objected that human wishes 
and desires do not prove the reality of their object, 
and that the desire of immortality, however strong 
and universal, may after all be only an inordinate 
expansion of our selfishness. But the objection is 



THE UNIVERSE. 



173 



not tenable if we find the desire to increase in 
definiteness and intensity in proportion to the 
increasing moral culture and intellectual perfection 
of the being by whom it is entertained ; and there 
would be an evident anomaly if education, which, 
in other instances tends to dissipate unfounded and 
visionary expectations, should only justify and 
strengthen the reliance we are led to place on this. 
The suggestions of our moral being are not to be 
confounded with empty dreams ; and though wishes 
are no unanswerable arguments whose refutation 
or disappointment by an unexpected reality is 
to be considered warrantable ground for impeach- 
ing divine justice, the case is different if these 
inevitable imaginings are found to be fortified by 
rational considerations drawn from the phenomena 
of our actual life compared with our faculties and 
capacities. 

The desire of the infinite and eternal seems little 
in unison with an organisation which is so restricted 
in its relations to time, that, at the longest, a 
comparatively short period must effect a total dis- 
persion of its elements. But man is not to be 
accounted for as a mere physical organism. 
His physical existence is complete in itself ; 



174 



THE RELIGION OF 



it has its beginning, middle, and end, like 
other individual entities of the vegetable and 
animal world. No phenomenon of man's physical 
life affords any rational probability of his revival 
after death. But his intellectual life has a different 
aspect. It does not, like the physical life, form a 
complete whole. A moral being is essentially 
perfectible and infinite. The capacity of improve- 
ment is never exhausted ; the abysses of know- 
ledge are never fathomed to the bottom. The 
thinking power, once commenced, is potentially 
endless ; in this world it certainly never attains its 
maximum of possible increase. 

There is an evident tendency in the human mind 
to regard some actions with a sentiment of appro- 
bation, and others with the contrary. What man 
is there, who, if an act of highly disinterested 
benevolence were related to him, would not in- 
stantly feel emotions of enthusiastic approba- 
tion? On the contrary, is there a single indi- 
vidual, independent of all acquired or fortuitous 
associations of malice or ill-will, who would not 
instantly condemn any atrocious instance of un- 
provoked cruelty or injustice ? Here we discern a 
constitution of the human mind highly propitious 



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175 



to virtue, and favourable to the best interests of 
society. 

Moral actions, when contemplated at all, are 
never objects of indifference. They cannot be 
perceived by the mind, without being instantly 
associated with some sentiment, either of appro- 
bation or disapprobation, of sympathy or aversion. 
An act of cruelty or benevolence, of love or hatred, 
of justice or injustice, cannot be contemplated 
without a considerable diversity of sentiment in 
the breast. Those actions which come under the 
denomination of good, appear to the calm and 
impartial spectator in a very different light from 
those which originate in malice and tend to pro- 
duce misery. 

In the different estimates of human conduct and 
the different modes of appreciating human actions, 
which necessarily arise out of the nature of the 
human mind, we clearly discern satisfactory proofs 
of a moral government in the Author of the human 
frame. Eo one can deny that that frame is his 
work, that it discovers his intentions and manifests 
his will ; for, of all the creatures which exist in the 
world, man, as being the most intellectual, certainly 
approaches the nearest to the Divinity. If there- 



176 



THE RELIGION OF 



fore we can deduce the nature of the Deity from 
any of His works, it must be more particularly evi- 
dent in the constitution of the human mind. ISTow, 
as in that constitution, there is either an instinc- 
tive principle of benevolence, or one of such early 
growth, and such imperceptible accretion, as to 
seem connate with the frame ; we cannot but infer 
that that benevolence, which is such a resplendent 
feature in man, and which is so universally an 
object of love, must be a distinguishing attribute 
of God. 

The benevolence of man is limited and modified 
by the imperfection of his nature ; but the bene- 
volence of God, as existing in an all-perfect being, 
must be without any limitations. The doubts 
which are entertained respecting a future state, 
usually originate in a narrow view or a latent 
distrust of the Divine benevolence ; for the in- 
dividual who is strongly impressed with a con- 
viction of that benevolence, cannot suppose that, 
if he is an object of it at present, he will cease 
to be so at any future period. That Divine love, 
which first called him into being, never can, con- 
sistently with its own nature, consign him to a 
state of annihilation. The life which is once given 



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177 



may be more and more glorified ; but it will never 
be taken away. The Divine benevolence is an 
assurance of immortality. 

Everj^ man is formed to seek his own happiness. 
Happiness is the object of which he is always in 
quest. Happiness is, if I may so speak, the strong 
appetite of his body, and the ardent desire of his 
mind. No desire can come in competition with 
this. But, though man is always in quest of 
happiness, how seldom does he find what he seeks ! 
He often seeks it, it is true, where it is not to be 
found ! He deviates from the right path of mode- 
ration and virtue ; he becomes the puppet or 
slave of inordinate passion, and extravagant 
desire. 

But even those who seek happiness in pursuits 
more consonant with, reason and more agreeable to 
virtue, do not always find what they seek. They 
are often victims of disappointment ; and instead 
of finding happiness are agonized with misery. 
Now, if we suppose this life the sum total of indi- 
vidual existence, there seems, in such a consti- 
tution of things, to be something irreconcileable 
with infinite wisdom, and still more so with infi- 
nite benevolence. It were absurd to make Provi- 

12 



178 



THE RELIGION OF 



dence responsible for our own failures and follies ; 
yet how reconcile with infinite wisdom so gene- 
rally prevalent a desire, apparently unsuited to 
the purpose, and doomed to disappointment? 

By making the desire of happiness so strong 
and so active in the human frame, Providence has 
clearly signified happiness to be the great imme- 
diate end and object of life. But in this life do 
we ever find the object completely attained, the 
end ever thoroughly accomplished ? Who can 
answer, "Yes"? I believe not one amongst the 
millions of the human race. Here, then, we 
see the Divine wisdom, willing the end, but appa- 
rently not giving the means requisite for the 
attainment ; irresistibly impelling to an object, 
but perpetually frustrating the pursuit. This 
seems incompatible with Infinite wisdom and 
instead of being a proof of benevolence, would 
rather seem an indication of a contrary dispo- 
sition. 

How then are we to reconcile such a constitu- 
tion of things with that unbounded wisdom and 
goodness which constitute the character of the 
Deity? It can be done only by considering 
human life as intermediate to something beyond, 



THE UNIVERSE. 



179 



where the happiness that has been in vain sought 
here will be fully obtained and permanently 
enjoyed. 

If this life be regarded as a passage to eternity, 
the longest life can be considered only as a fleet- 
ing moment, a minute and almost imperceptible 
point. In the operations of Deity the solid and 
durable seem often to arise out of what is frail 
and fugitive. Permanent good is often the effect 
of transient evil. The momentary frustration of 
a purpose proves to be the means of its lasting 
accomplishment. 

In the present scheme of things, and in the 
combination of causes and effects apparent to 
common observation, much less account is made 
of the life and well-being of man, than seems 
to be compatible with the idea of perfect good- 
ness in the Father of the universe. Men perish 
as the blossoms drop from the tree. In the 
hurricane and the pestilence, in a storm at sea, 
or an earthquake on land, in the inundation 
of a river, the subversion of a sea-bank, or the 
irruption of a volcano, no regard seems to be paid 
to individual life, no distinction to be made 
between varieties of moral qualification. The 



180 



THE RELIGION OF 



young, the old, and the middle aged, the gay 
and the serious, the sensual and the abstinent, the 
just and the fraudulent, the cruel and the humane, 
are all alike exposed to those gigantic powers of 
destruction, which are so dreadfully active in par- 
ticular ages and nations of the world. 1 

In the present state of things no exclusive 
arrangements are made for the preservation of 
the good, the just, the humane, the beneficent, 
in periods of sickness or of death. Where the 
virtuous are preserved, their consciousness may 
be its own reward in the internal satisfaction with 
which it cheers the breast ; but is not this satisfac- 
tion itself intimately blended with the prospect of a 
happy futurity in other scenes of being ? Besides 
the virtue may be of such a kind as to cause the 
immediate destruction of the individual. There 
may not be an interval left for internal satisfaction 
to vibrate on the nerves, or to throw a sunny smile 
upon the conscience. 

For instance, a man of energetic benevolence 

1 Kant took occasion from the great earthquake of Lisbon in 
1755, to point ont the distinction between the physical and the 
moral order, between individual and universal interests. See also 
the poem of Voltaire on the same subject. 



THE UNIVERSE. 



181 



rescues a fellow- creature from a fire and is himself 
burnt to death in the flames. He plunges into the 
waves to save a sinking friend, pushes him to the 
shore, is exhausted in the struggle, and perishes 
himself at the very moment he has rescued another 
from the grave. 

In the above, and in a variety of similar cases, 
how can we reconcile the fate of the most dis- 
interested virtue to the paternal character of 
the Deity, unless we consider this life as relative 
to another ? If we adopt such a supposition, 
we may then readily believe that the casualties, 
to which the righteous are exposed, are rather 
marks of favour than indications of indifference. 
For in this case the death which the virtue of 
the individual occasions, is only the commence- 
ment of the happiness which he has strenuously 
pursued and earnestly aspired to. 1 

We seem made not merely to enjoy the present 
life, but to think on a life to come ; and to do 

1 Aristotle, in a well known passage of his Sic. Ethics, ix. 8, 
answers the question differently. He thinks the supreme satisfac- 
tion derivable by the individual from such acts of self-devotion — 
even though only momentary — a sufficient motive and compensa- 
tion for their performance. The same sentiment is repeated in the 
famous scolion on virtue, attributed to the philosopher in Athemeus, 



182 



THE RELIGION OF 



so the more in proportion to the degree of our 
moral aptitude and intellectual culture. The light 
of the sun is not more agreeable to the eye than 
the contemplation of futurity to the mind. 

The perplexing uncertainty in which a future 
life is involved, incites us to think of it more than 
we should, if the reality were more or less subject 
to doubt. What is subject to doubt, leaves room 
for hope and fear to operate ; and keeps the mind 
in a state more favourable to the exercise of its 
powers, than if the truth were so resplendent as 
to afford no room for uncertainty, or so merged 
in darkness, as not to furnish a single ray of hope. 

A future life is evidently designed to be a state 
of interesting but not harassing solicitude. An 
event which is sure to come to pass, cannot be an 
object of hesitating anxiety. From the uncer- 
tainty when it will happen, death occupies the 
thoughts oftener and more usefully than it would 
if instead of being liable to take place at any 

bk. xv. 51, p. 696. But man is no isolated individual, and the 
sentiment ceases to appear paradoxical if for mere individual grati- 
fication as a motive, we substitute the moral satisfaction enjoyed in 
the contemplation of general happiness. But this leads on to a 
more exalted conception of felicity in which self ceases to be promi- 
nent, in fact, to an ideal immortality of another kind. 



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183 



moment in the day, it were fixed to some defi- 
nite period, and left no room for uncertainty or 
suspense. In this case men would either not think 
of death till the moment of its arrival, or they 
would think of it too constantly and despondingly, 
without the moral effect arising from its indefinite 
contingency. 

In the period of youth, in the effervescence of 
juvenile passion, or in the follies of maturer years, 
what arguments could we urge for moral restraint 
on the one hand, and against vicious excess on the 
other, like that which we may derive from the 
consideration that life is one of the most fugitive 
and variable possessions ; and that its duration is 
always a matter of inscrutable uncertainty ? " Man 
blooms like a flower, and fades away ; he passes 
like a shadow, abiding never/' 1 Great are the 
moral uses of this picture of human instability ! 

But, as great benefits are produced by the 
uncertain duration of the present life, so, even the 
distressing doubts and indefinite imaginings which 
cloud the prospect of a future life, are not with- 
out their use. They bring the subject more often 



The passage (Job xiv. 2) is given here from Ewald's version.— Ed. 



184 



THE RELIGION OF 



before the thoughts ; and it is a question which 
cannot occupy the mind, without a greater or less 
degree of salutary influence. He, who often 
reflects on the probabilities of a future life is 
likely to form a more sober estimate of human 
interests, and to be less a slave to avarice, to 
ambition, or to any precarious and short-lived 
gratifications. 

Grod might have so modified the mind, and 
so regulated the course of affairs, that a 
future life should not have been an object of 
human expectation; that man should have no 
more thought of a future than he has conscious- 
ness of a previous existence. The subject might 
not only have been involved in clouds and darkness, 
but might absolutely have precluded the action 
of human curiosity, and have set an impassable 
barrier to human speculation. Such a conviction 
might have been impressed upon the human mind 
that there was no future life, that no individual 
would have made it the subject of reflection ; much 
less have contemplated it with that anxiety, that 
solemn earnestness, and that deep interest, which 
it now excites in morally cultivated minds. 

On the contrary, the conviction of a future life 



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185 



might have been rendered so clear that not a 
doubt could have been entertained respecting its 
certainty. Its truth might have approached so 
close to the confines of present consciousness, as 
to exclude that alternate agency, and mingled 
influence of hope and fear, which are so perpetually 
operative in the present state of things, and ruffle 
the surface of life with a wholesome agitation. 
Such a certainty of a future life as I am supposing, 
would either have so absorbed the thoughts as to 
prevent the requisite attention of human beings to 
human affairs, or it would have had the effect of 
some other certainties in producing apathy and 
indifference. 

The degree of probability in which a future life 
is placed, appears to be exactly that medium of 
light and darkness, of hope and fear, which is 
fitted to augment the interest, and to redouble 
the activity of the intellectual faculties. 

There is one sensation which all human beings 
appear, at times, to experience ; a depressing con- 
sciousness of the vanity of all earthly things, 
and of the unsatisfactory nature of all human 
enjoyments. No circumstances can exempt the 
individual from the occasional intrusion of this 



186 



THE RELIGION OF 



sentiment into his breast. The most prosperous 
condition in life is no protection against its 
attacks, no security against its influence. 

This sensation is, perhaps, most common to 
persons in exalted conditions of life. Those 
persons who have most of the good things which 
the world has to bestow, seem often to be most 
convinced of their insufficiency to produce happi- 
ness, or to prevent the busy intrusions of care 
and woe. 

Human life exhibits no enjoyment without a 
mixture of some qualifying or extenuating ingre- 
dients. The sweetest cup has some present infusion 
of bitter, or some subsequent sensation of insipidity 
or disgust. The highest gratifications of ambition 
or of avarice, of pride rejoicing in the elevation of 
rank or power, or of sensuality luxuriating in 
every variety of delight, are sure to be associated 
with, or to be followed by, a weary feeling 
that the individual has been pursuing a vain 
shadow ; and has erred in his choice of the 
means, or in his notions of the constituents of 
happiness. 

No man can seek felicity in any temporal 
possessions, or any perishable pleasure, without 



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187 



a frequent intermediate conviction that his 
judgment has been erroneous, and his estimate 
fallacious. The conclusion which the Jewish 
king drew is that which every voluptuary will 
draw, who has had similar opportunities of 
enjoyment, that every earthly delight is vain 
and unsatisfactory ; and that the pursuit of virtue 
and goodness is that alone in which there is 
no alloy. 

This sensation of the nothingness of all earthly 
things, the sentiment of insipidity, satiety, or 
disgust, which more or less, sooner or later, 
attaches itself to all temporal gratifications, appears 
to be designed as a moral auxiliary to man ; to 
admonish him that there is no human interest in 
which there is not a large portion of alloy ; and 
hence to incite him to turn his thoughts to a 
region beyond the grave ; to aspire to an im- 
perishable destiny. 

The human mind is perpetually springing from 
the limited and temporal, to the infinite and eternal. 
Man appears to be surrounded hy every thing 
perishable except his own mind, and the minds 
of the intellectual creation. Eternity has some- 
thing congenial with the state and faculties of 



188 



THE RELIGION OF 



his mind, which shrinks, with a sort of instinctive 
repugnance, from the idea of what is finite and 
perishing, but attaches itself with a kindred fami- 
liarity, a sort of native fondness, to what is immu- 
table and everlasting. But is it at all probable 
that this would be the strongest propensity of the 
human mind, if that mind were to perish with 
the corporeal organization ? How could the pre- 
dominant idea of the Infinite and Eternal corres- 
pond with the nature of a being, whose existence 
was a mere fugitive shadow, and his mind only a 
momentary scintillation ? What congruity would 
there be between a general, if not an in-born 
aspiration after the fixed and immutable, and a 
destiny as evanescent as that of a moth or a fly ? 

Would the sentiment of eternity be the con- 
stant associate, the stay and solace of the mind in 
all circumstances, in all countries, and all degrees 
of barbarism or civilization ; of deep ignorance or 
splendid light ; if the higher principle of man, his 
moral and intellectual self- consciousness, were to 
be extinguished with the breath of his animal life ? 

As there is demonstrably a native tendency in 
the mind of man to speculate on the infinite and 
eternal, as well as a natural congruity between 



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189 



that infinite and eternal and the faculties of the 
mind, when in their most matured condition of 
vigour and attainment, and as both the tendency to 
reflect on a future life and to anticipate the reality 
are admirably adapted to promote the good and 
to counteract the evil in the circumstances in 
which we are placed; these considerations may 
well serve to impress a conviction that there is 
nothing chimerical in the thought, and nothing 
illusory in the hope. 

In the present world no account appears to be 
made of human life. Men, as inhabitants of the 
earth, seem to be of as little estimation in the 
great scale of things, as the most microscopic 
insect or the most minute flower. We behold 
thousands in a populous city, or dispersed over a 
rich tract of country, swallowed up by an earth- 
quake, swept away by an inundation, or buried 
under the fiery entrails of a volcano. And in the 
cases in which these calamities occur, the events 
themselves seem as much in the natural course of 
things, and as agreeable to the common series of 
occurrences, as it is to behold the blossom of an 
orchard blasted by the east wind, or the hopes of 
the harvest rendered abortive by too much rain 



190 



THE RELIGION OF 



or too little sunshine. Man, considered merely as 
a being of this earth, is found to have no better 
chance of escaping the destructive powers of 
nature than the swarm of gnats in a summer's 
noon or the busy myriads of an ant hill. 

But would so little regard be shown for the 
preservation of man, would his health, his subsis- 
tence, be exposed to so many untoward contin- 
gencies, if this life were the whole of his existence, 
and if beyond it, the prospect were not only 
dreary and dark, but absolutely the line where 
all being ends ? 

If this life were an insulated whole, rather than 
a single link in an interminable chain of existence, 
it could not, in the common course of things, be 
an object of such diminutive concern, as vulgar 
observation remarks and general experience infers. 
— But if this life, instead of being a complete 
period in itself, is only the early dawn of a being 
that will never end, but which will open perpetually 
on brighter and brighter prospects, on higher and 
higher glories, on a wider and wider expanse of 
intelligence and goodness, — then it can be of 
little moment how soon or how abruptly the initia- 
tory prelude to such a happy futurity is brought 



THE UNIVERSE. 



191 



to a close. — The sooner the curtain of mortality is 
drawn, the sooner the eyes will open on orbs of 
more glory than this world exhibits ; the sooner 
the heart, which is oppressed with the varieties of 
human woe, will vibrate with sensations of true 
joy ; and the sooner the mind, harassed with 
doubts, because clouded with ignorance, will feel 
that assurance of the most sublime truths, which 
a nearer insight into the nature of the Divine 
government will communicate. 

If immortality be the destiny of man, then it is 
of little comparative importance with how many 
ills life is encumbered, with how many sorrows 
darkened, or by what means the termination is 
accelerated ; whether by famine or pestilence, a 
war or an earthquake, a volcano or an inundation. 
For, though such calamities are dreadful to appre- 
hend, and, for the moment, agonizing to suffer, 
yet we readily conceive that, in the happier cir- 
cumstances of a more stable existence to which 
they are preparatory, they will soon vanish to an 
almost imperceptible point, or be so changed by 
the different medium through which they are 
viewed, as to be objects of even pleasurable con- 
templation. The " Forsan et hooc olim meminisse 



192 



THE RELIGION OF 



juvabit;" " Perhaps it will one day delight 
us to think of these things/' may be applied to 
the ills of this world, not only after their termina- 
tion in the present life, but even after this life 
itself has terminated. 

That there is much vice and misery in the 
world no one will dispute. The fact is incon- 
testable. And whether we adopt the theory of 
Liberty or that of Necessity, we must ultimately 
come to the same conclusion, that every thing, 
both in the moral and in the physical world, may 
be traced up to the will of the First Cause. The 
only difference is, that in the scheme of Liberty, 
that is ascribed to permission, which, in the 
hypothesis of Necessity, is imputed to absolute 
decree. 1 Whether God rives a faculty, the wrong 
use of which produces evil, or whether the evil 
originates in a more immediate physical necessity, 



1 God may doubtless be said to permit evil, as Schiller says in 
his Don Carlos, so far as may be necessary to save unharmed the 
glorious privilege of moral freedom; but then freedom is itself 
limited and encompassed by the divine overruling necessity ; so that 
Lessing, who, however, was no fatalist, is led to exclaim : — " I 
%ank Thee, All wise Creator, that I must, that I am compelled to 
go in the direction of the best ; for if, even as it is, I make so manv 
mistakes, what should I do were I left wholly to myself I" 



THE UNIVERSE. 



193 



it must, in both cases, arise out of the actual con- 
stitution of things. For God might either have 
withheld the faculty, or have given only a bene- 
ficial tendency to its operations ; and when he did 
give the faculty he must have known the uses to 
which it would be applied ; and hence does it not 
come to the same thing as if he had immediately 
directed the application, or had produced the evil 
which the faculty has caused by the medium of 
some less intellectual agency ? All the agents in 
the moral world, whether men. or angels, must be 
subordinate to the great purposes of God ; and as 
nothing which they do can be done without his 
permission, so in fact every thing which they 
do, must, more or less circuitously, be referred 
to his will. 

As, therefore, all the vice and misery which are 
in the world, must be the natural effect of the 
present constitution of things, which could have 
had no other origin than that of the Divine will, 
it follows that this vice and misery, if God be 
essentially good, must terminate in virtue and 
happiness, and consequently point to a life to come. 

That God is not a malevolent being is, I think, 
sufficiently proved by this simple argument, with- 

13 



194 



THE RELIGION OF 



out entering into more elaborate details lead- 
ing to the same conclusion, — that, in all the func- 
tions of animated beings, there is a great super- 
abundance of pleasurable sensation, more than is 
requisite for all the purposes of existence, and for 
the continuation of the sentient world. Now all 
the pleasurable sensation, which is more than 
enough for this purpose, must be ascribed to pure 
benevolence. For to what else can it be ascribed ? 
If all the operations of life, under all its diversified 
forms, could have been carried on with a much 
less share of pleasurable sensation, than is at 
present experienced, the overplus certainly could 
not originate in the will of a malevolent being. 
For if malevolence consist in one thing more than 
another, or if it have any distinct character, it is 
that of an indisposition to produce happiness for 
its own sake, or to cause pleasure and joy where 
its ends could be accomplished by anguish and 
woe. In the world in which we are living, there 
is a sufficient redundancy of pleasurable effect to 
prove benevolent design ; but then it must be 
allowed that we see numerous phenomena of an 
opposite character. 

In numerous instances we behold a sad variety 



THE UNIVERSE, 



195 



of ills ; a diversified mass of pain and wretched- 
ness ; which it is impossible to reconcile with 
benevolent design, nnless we make this life a state 
in connection with, or relative to, something to 
come ; a region of clouds and darkness, prepara- 
tory to a scene of brighter prospects and larger 
views. 

The instances of benevolent design, which are 
incorporated in the present constitution of things, 
are too many to need enumeration, and too palpable 
to require proof. But if these instances show 
that pure good will to his creatures is the essential 
character of Gfod, then nothing like malevolent 
intention, can exist in any of his works, or con- 
stitute, any part of his administration. For pure 
benevolence supposes a total exclusion of the 
opposite quality ; and hence the seeming indica- 
tions of indifference to the state of the sentient 
world, which force themselves upon our view, 
agitating our minds and torturing our hearts, must 
not be regarded as deductions from the innate 
goodness of the Deity ; or as an intimation of some 
sentiment existing in his mind opposite to that of 
love ; but as evidence that this life is only part of 
a greater scheme ; and a sort of passage from a 



196 



THE RELIGION OF 



state of temporary inquietude and suffering to 
one of permanent tranquillity and joy. 

If this life be an intermediate state, vice and 
misery may be permitted, as means to an end ; 
but as the end is not attained in this life, another 
state or a succession of future states may be ex- 
pected, in which it will be accomplished. We 
may readily conceive a good and wise Being to 
promote the production of virtue and happiness, 
which are, in some measure, homogeneous, or re- 
lated like cause and effect, for their own sakes, as 
most congenial to the highest purposes of the 
purest benevolence. But vice and misery can 
never be supposed to be permitted for their own 
sakes ; but only in order to something, which is 
to be the ultimate result. Moral effects are some- 
times powerfully promoted by contraries. Yice, 
generating suffering, will often cause a stronger 
conviction of the importance of virtue, and of its 
connexion with happiness, than could well have 
been produced if the individual had not had that 
previous experience. 

If God designed men for endless progression 
in virtue and happiness, we may easily conceive 
why they should begin their course not only at 



THE UNIVERSE. 



197 



the lowest point of each, but why they should first 
know something of the opposite, that they might 
enjoy the benefit of a more ample moral experi- 
ence. "WTiere men enter upon the sphere of a 
progressive existence at a certain line in the scale 
of vice and suffering, that experience, operating 
upon a reflecting mind, may tend to render the 
individual more susceptible of happiness. It may 
refine his moral sensibility to the different quali- 
ties and effects of vice and virtue ; and in pro- 
portion as the person advances from his primary 
station in the vale of vice and misery, his future 
proficiency in virtue, and consequently in happi- 
ness, may be accelerated by his past consciousness 
in every step of his way to a higher and higher 
degree of glory and blessedness. 

But, in all these considerations, a future life is 
essential. It is that on which the whole theory 
rests. According to this view of the moral world, 
the present life is so constituted, that even vice 
and misery are, in their tendencies and effects, 
made to further the advancement of individuals 
in a more and more impressive consciousness that 
there can be no genuine happiness, except in 
connection with virtue ; and that therefore there 



198 



THE RELIGION OF 



must be a general relation between happiness and 
virtue. But since no virtue, however pure and 
exalted, has on earth its full complement of bliss, 
or is exempted from liability to the most painful 
privations, distressing inquietudes, and agonizing 
sufferings, there remains from all that has been 
previously said, a by no means improbable infer- 
ence that man is destined for a more exalted and 
incorruptible state of existence than that which 
he now enjoys. 

If vice and misery were to be considered not as 
means to an end, or as necessary ingredients in 
the composition of a state of moral discipline, but 
as the end itself, without any ulterior object in the 
Divine mind ; then the Divine attributes could not 
be such as they are represented. God could not 
be essentially good. For no essentially good 
being could will vice and misery as an end. He 
might, from inscrutable reasons, admit vice and 
misery into the scheme at the beginning, as a 
means of the greatest ultimate virtue and happi- 
ness ; but none but an essentially malevolent 
Being could intend vice and misery as the final 
result of any of his dispensations. 

We are, therefore, reduced to the dilemma of 



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199 



supposing either that the world was created by a 
malevolent Being, who, in arranging, at least, a 
part of his scheme, had nothing but vice and 
misery in view ; or else, that it is under the ad- 
ministration of an essentially benevolent Being, 
who, by a slow but sure process, is gradually 
bringing light out of darkness, order out of con- 
fusion, virtue out of vice, and happiness out of 
misery; and who designs knowledge, goodness, 
and joy pure and unsophisticated, as the grand 
consummation of the universal scheme ; and con- 
sequently the final destination of every separate 
atom of intellectual existence. 

Does the world present any indications of a pa- 
ternal character in the Deity ? Every individual 
must determine this question for himself ; by not- 
ing the particular vicissitudes in his own life and 
circumstances, with the effect which they have had 
upon his disposition and character ; and the ten- 
dencies to moral improvement that he may trace 
in some of those events, which, at the time, excited 
most distrust, and occasioned most dissatisfaction 
in his breast. Ko man can discern the benevolent 
administration of the Deity so well as in the tissue 
of his own life. Here he will find it delineated in 



200 



THE RELIGION OF 



characters that cannot well be mistaken, if he will 
examine it with attention, and carefully watch its 
beginning, progress, and results. 

The events of life appear to me to be so combined 
as to teach the supreme importance of virtue and 
goodness to the happiness of the individual. In 
the hey-day of youth, and during the strong effer- 
vescence of passion, virtue and goodness may be 
overlooked in the estimate of happiness, or may 
be thought to deduct from, more than they add 
to, the sum of enjoyment. But as years roll on, 
this delusion gradually vanishes, and more cor- 
rect notions supply its place. All pleasures are 
found vain and unsatisfactory, which are at all in 
opposition to those precepts of moral duty, which 
have been universally inculcated, by the reflective 
and the wise, in all ages and climes. 

As life advances, the impression becomes stronger 
and stronger, that, when we deviated from virtue, 
we mistook the path to happiness. Vice, with all 
its concomitant gratifications, is found to leave no- 
thing behind it but the sentiment of aversion and 
regret. Thus even vice itself, in its ultimate 
effects, becomes the auxiliary of virtue, and re- 
commends its practice, and impresses its necessity, 



THE UNIVERSE. 



201 



with an energy which derives additional strength 
from the contrast. JNo vicious man, probably, 
ever dies without an avowed or a latent convic- 
tion, that he has made a wrong choice ; and, in 
following the shadow, has forsaken the substance 
of happiness. Thus, even in the most flagitious 
characters, ultimate conviction usually, and, if the 
interior of the heart could be inspected, perhaps 
always, is strongly in favour of a virtuous life. 
If there be any truth in this supposition, it shows 
that notwithstanding the great diversity of the 
moral process which is adopted with respect to 
individuals, according to their dispositions and 
circumstances, the growth of the virtuous prin- 
ciple is secretly encouraged in the midst of the 
most inordinate depravity and the most flagrant 
crimes. But to what purpose is this tendency to 
form virtuous character, or to produce virtuous 
principle, if this character be not consummated, 
or this principle vivified in some state beyond the 
grave ? To what purpose are the regrets of vice, 
and the dying approbation of virtue, if the moment 
the breath of life is exhaled the consciousness is 
extinct and all the faculties of the soul are anni- 
hilated for ever ? 



202 



THE RELIGION OF 



That moral process in favour of virtue and good- 
ness, which, is continually, though often impercep- 
tibly, going on in the complex tissue of individual 
character and human agency, convinces me that 
this life is relative to some state beyond it ; and 
that the principle of virtue, which is abridged in 
its duration, or circumscribed in its agency here, 
is destined to display its power in a higher sphere, 
and in happier circumstances. 

There are many indications, both in the physical 
and in the moral administration of the universe, 
that this is not a fatherless world. Nothing seems 
produced without ample means being provided for 
its sustenance and enjoyment. Either the grati- 
fications themselves are furnished without previous 
toil, or the faculty is bestowed, by the exercise 
of which they may be procured. They are made 
to supply objects cf pleasurable pursuit ; and the 
exertion which is requisite for the attainment is 
productive of high gratification. The proofs of 
benevolent design are visible, not only in the 
general scheme, but in all the particulars of 
animate being which come under our observa- 
tion. But can we suppose that the benevolent 
regard of the Deity for his creatures is only tran- 



THE UNIVERSE. 



203 



sient and fugitive ? Does it exist only for a short 
interval, while they are sojourners upon the earth, 
and vanish the moment they sink into the grave ? 

It is impossible to suppose any other sentiment 
than that of love to exist in the Divine mind to- 
wards his creatures ; but can this sentiment be so 
faint and evanescent as the apparent brevity of 
human life would lead us to suppose ? Must not 
the sentiments of love in the Divine mind be per- 
manent and eternal ? Must they not always con- 
tinue the same and unchanged ? To suppose the 
contrary would be to suppose a degree of variable- 
ness and mutability in the Supreme intelligence, 
which our moral notions w T ould consider as cul- 
pable even in his creatures. Can we approve that 
state of the affections in the bosom of a father, 
which would lead him to regard with aversion or 
indifference to-morrow the children whom he ten- 
derly loved to-day ? Or who, having the power 
to prolong the lives of his offspring, should deter- 
mine that they should live only half their days, 
and that after he had caused them to anticipate a 
length of years ? But can such capricious and 
insensate conduct towards his children be reason- 
ably ascribed to the Father of the universe ? A 



204 



THE RELIGION OF 



future life, therefore, is a necessary inference from 
his paternal character. 

The phenomena of benevolence remarked in 
such numerous instances, and which are all ap- 
parently only part of a great whole (for there 
is nothing disconnected in the universe), authorise 
us to suppose others which are necessary to com- 
plete the design. This supposition is not chi- 
merical or gratuitous. It is forced upon the mind 
by the circumstances in which it is placed, and 
by the evidence of so many probabilities in the 
chequered scene of human life. 

If the moral state of man be a chaos of confu- 
sion and uncertainty without a future life, and 
when that supposition instantly renders the whole 
regular and harmonious, consistent with the highest 
wisdom and the most perfect goodness, may we 
not reasonably acquiesce in it ? An hypothesis, 
which is sufficient to account for all the pheno- 
mena, has at all events a strong presumptive 
claim to provisional credibility. 

Had two opposite principles been at the same 
time exerted in the creation of the world, there 
would not have been the order and harmony 
which are now so strikingly manifested in the 



THE UNIVERSE. 



205 



works of God. In every individual part of the 
system, as far as it is subject to our cognizance, 
we discern a unity of contrivance, a regular com- 
bination of parts in one scheme, which indicates 
the agency of one designing mind. Intelligence 
is everywhere perceptible, but it is an intelligence 
which displays the character of unity in all its 
operations. A certain distinct and indivisible 
identity is seen in all the works of God which 
come under our contemplation. 

Even in the most jarring elements we perceive 
the operations of a power which imposes a re- 
straint upon their agency. The thunder and the 
lightning, the hurricane and the storm, have their 
prescribed boundaries, and are limited in their 
effects. The rolling ocean has its bounds as well 
as the unruffled lake. One mighty will is every- 
where active ; one superintending power is every- 
where seen. 

God is either entirely benevolent or the con- 
trary. The benevolent character, if it exist at all, 
must exist in an infinite degree. But if God be 
infinitely benevolent, contradictory appearances 
cannot be real ; they must be entirely owing to 
our narrow perceptions and short-sighted views. 



206 



THE RELIGION OF 



And that short-sightedness, as far as respects the 
semblance of any defect of benevolence in the 
moral scheme, must be principally owing to the 
limitation of our perceptions to this visible sphere. 

When we consider this life as insulated, neither 
connected with anything past nor relative to any- 
thing to come, we may well be startled at the 
appearances which it occasionally exhibits of such 
an indifference to human suffering as is not com- 
patible with the character of infinite benevolence. 
But if benevolence does inhere in the essence of 
the Supreme Being, how is it compatible with any 
limitations ? Is it not necessarily infinite, and 
does not a future life follow as an inseparable 
consequence ? If God be essentially benevolent, 
the existence of man cannot be circumscribed 
within the circle of a few years in which he is 
an inhabitant of the earth. Those few years can 
only be a short part of a great whole ; the mere 
commencement of a being which can no more 
cease than the benevolence of the paternal and 
omnipresent Spirit from whom it was derived. 

In any large and complicated scheme, the evi- 
dence of general character and intention, where 
the appearances are in a state of perplexing con- 



THE UNIVERSE. 



207 



trariety, must be drawn from that which is pre- 
dominant. Now, as the world certainly exhibits 
more numerous phenomena of the benevolent than 
of the contrary character, we are necessarily led 
to regard the first as the essential attribute of the 
Deity, and the last as transient and fugitive 
appearances rather than solid and permanent 
realities. They tend to encourage the belief that 
our present existence is connected with another 
state of things, and is relative to some higher 
sphere. 

As all our moral reasoning is in favour of a 
future life, without which it is, in numerous in- 
stances, very incongruous, defective, and unsatis- 
factory, is not this circumstance alone a powerful 
argument in its support ? Man either has a 
naturally implanted sense of moral right, or is so 
constituted, and placed in such circumstances, that 
the ideas of moral right and wrong must arise in 
his mind, however little his reason may be exer- 
cised on human conduct, or however superficially 
he may reflect upon human actions. No man can 
help approving some actions and disapproving 
others. There is a sentiment within him, either 
innate or so imperceptibly produced as to appear 



208 



THE RELIGION OF 



innate, which makes him feel some actions to be 
objects of condemnation and others of blame ; 
which causes him to prefer truth, justice, and 
humanity, to falsehood, injustice, and cruelty. 
The moral constitution of man is so arranged 
that this is rather an effect of necessity than of 
choice. Truth, justice, and humanity naturally 
recommend themselves to the mind as more esti- 
mable than the contrary. Even the liar and the 
thief, whatever may be their exterior conduct, 
cannot in the interior of their bosoms refuse the 
sentiment of approbation to the very virtues which 
they habitually violate. 

Hence it appears that man is naturally a moral 
agent. His spirit lives and moves in a moral 
atmosphere ; nor can his mind be truly said to be 
in a healthy state where it ceases to be influenced 
by moral considerations. But the obligations of 
virtue cannot be universally binding, unless we 
suppose a region to which the consciousness 
migrates when the physical organization is de- 
stroyed. For as God has rendered virtue, con- 
sidered under its various ramifications into truth, 
justice, and beneficence, more an object of appro- 
bation than the contrary ; and as sensations of 



TKE UNIVERSE. 



209 



regret are the usual result of vicious conduct, we 
cannot suppose that so many individuals would 
occasionally have to incur such dreadful temporal 
sufferings from their obedience to that rule of life 
which the conscience approves, and which the 
constitution of the world enjoins, if the Creator 
had not appointed a state of recompense after 
death. 

The operation of the divine laws generally con- 
duces to happiness ; and the constitution of nature 
shows that virtue is, as regards human conduct, 
the law of him who made the world. But since 
implicit conformity with this law is often attended 
with the greatest temporal ills and sufferings 
independently of an}' fault of the sufferer, may 
it not be expected that another state of being will 
follow the present, in which the steady persistency 
in good, so ill requited here, will be more than 
recompensed ? For instead of supposing that the 
recompense will be stinted in its measure to the 
precise merit of the individual, we must infer 
that it will rather be in unison with that Infinite 
benevolence from which it springs. Without a 
future life the moral world is an enigma incapable 
of solution ; but such a life is a key which unlocks 

14 



210 



THE RELIGION OF 



all the mysteries of Providence, and exhibits the 
Creator in the unclouded light of wisdom and 
goodness. 

We cannot imagine the moral world to be 
under the administration of a different being from 
the physical ; or that whilst there is so much regu- 
larity in the natural world, there can be any real 
confusion in the moral, except what appears con- 
fusion from the limitation of our views to the 
results of the present life. When we reflect on 
the exact order and harmony which are percep- 
tible in the natural world, when we consider the 
immense orbs which are perpetually revolving in 
space to minutes and seconds, and that not for 
short periods, but for thousands and millions of 
years, can we doubt but that the moral world, 
which must be equally under the administration 
of the same Eternal essence, would manifest equal 
harmony in its combinations and results, if we 
could take a wider survey of the great moral 
scheme as it respects the intellectual race of man ? 

The arguments in favour of a future life which 
may be deduced from analogy, are weak and un- 
satisfactory. Insects exhibit certain changes in 
their form and modes of existence ; but they do 



THE UNIVERSE. 



211 



not afford the slightest presumption for supposing 
a continuation of consciousness in a change of 
state. And, without a continuation of conscious- 
ness, what would a future life be but a chimerical 
supposition ? The probabilities in favour of a 
future life drawn from analogy are too faint to 
impress, too ambiguous to convince, too vague 
to console. The reasoning from analog} 7 , instead 
of tending to establish the truth of a future life, 
leans the other way. The visible phenomena of 
death excite the idea of total annihilation with- 
out any subsequent revival. The body returns to 
dust ; the organic frame moulders into particles 
of kindred earth; not a trace of the individual 
remains. And what analogy is there in any part 
of the material world from which we can elicit 
even a glimmering hope that an indestructible 
consciousness is annexed to a corporeal existence ? 
All the force of the argument lies not in analogical, 
but in moral considerations. 1 

We have no reason to believe that a future life 
forms an object of hope, or a subject of contem- 



1 Hence it applies exclusively to man, who seems to be the 
only moral agent in the world. 



212 



THE RELIGION OF 



plation to any of the inferior animals. This hope 
and contemplation, at once pleasurable and sublime, 
seems to constitute a distinguishing characteristic 
of intellectual man. It is therefore a Tain and 
idle attempt to labour to discover analogies in 
favour of a future life amongst organised beings 
who have no reflective powers ; or to endeavour 
to establish it in the mutations of form and diver- 
sities of state, which insects undergo. The proofs 
of the doctrine are to be sought in man and man 
alone. But the corporeal frame of man, however 
nicely it may be scrutinized, will furnish no satis- 
factory evidence, no consoling probabilities in 
favour of a future life. It must be sought in his 
moral constitution. The vital powers perish with 
the organic functions to which they were attached. 
But the moral nature of man, by which he is so 
highly distinguished above other animals, leads us 
to hope that there is a self-consciousness within 
him which will survive the dissolution of his 
organic frame. 

If any of the inferior animals have something 
like a moral sense, man has it in a degree so much 
higher and more transcendent, that it may be 
deeme 1 his essential characteristic. The sense of 



THE UNIVERSE. 



213 



what he ought to do, is continually present to 
his mind ; and whatever conduct he may pursue, 
or however widely he may deviate from what he 
feels that he ought to do, the sentiment will inter- 
vene, and force itself upon his consideration. The 
very nature of man appears to include a sentiment 
of duty and a consciousness of what he ought to 
do independently of personal interest or individual 
good, in a way that elevates him in the scale of 
being far above the horse, or the ox, or any other 
organic inhabitant of this terrestrial globe. Man 
feels that he is accountable for his actions, as a 
moral agent, to an authority above that of any 
human tribunal. When he acts in opposition 
to what he feels that he ought to do, the sentiment 
of regret will agitate his breast on those occasions 
in which he has nothing to apprehend from any 
judicial cognizance ; no reason to fear that he will 
incur the blame, or lose the esteem of his fellow- 
creatures. 

This sentiment of duty, which when not dimmed 
by the clouds of superstition, disturbed by the 
tempests of passion, or perverted by the fascina- 
tions Gf vice, is like a central sun in the moral 
nature of man ; it indicates an hereafter, by 



214 



THE RELIGION OF 



inducing a belief that human conduct is an object 
of the Divine regard and that the actions of man 
are relative to some scheme of which there -will be 
a more full development after death. 

Man has been described as a religious animal. 
The religious sentiment 1 is one of the discrimina- 
ting characteristics of his nature, making it 
superior to that of the other animals. He is placed 
in circumstances, in which a sentiment of depen- 
dence upon some invisible being who made and 
who governs the world, will force its way into 
the mind. This sentiment, in proportion as it is 
expanded by reflection, will open into that train of 
thought and feeling which constitutes the essence 
of adoration. 

We live in a world in which we find ourselves 
surrounded by phenomena of power and goodness, 
of which we can neither count the number, nor 
measure the extent. The phenomena of goodness, 
as they are mingled with those of power, not only 
elicit a sentiment of dependence, but cherish hope 
in adversity, and excite confidence in distress. 
Thus the religious affections are nurtured in our 



1 See Appendix {c). 



THE UNIVERSE. 



215 



hearts ; the objects around us are calculated to 
excite those affections, or to make God the object 
of faith and of love. But the more these affections 
are cultivated, or the more God becomes an object 
of trust and confiding love, the less we can believe 
that he has brought us into this world, and indued 
us with intelligence to reason on his perfections, 
to contemplate his works, to feel the highest 
sentiments of adoration, and then to moulder away 
into unconscious dust. Can he have given this 
consciousness only to withdraw it after it has been 
exercised for a brief interval ? "What a good man 
has once given, he never takes away. He suffers 
the possession to remain as long as the power 
of enjoyment. Can we suppose that God will 
ever take away the consciousness which he has 
bestowed ? Will the theopathetic affections, which 
his works are formed to excite, and our hearts to 
feel, suffer us for a moment to entertain a thought 
so unworthy of his goodness, so derogatory to his 
attributes ? 

The theopathetic affections, which arise from a 
conviction of the Divine benevolence, cannot but 
be in opposition to the chilling sentiment that 
death is to terminate the connection between us 



216 



THE RELIGION OF 



and God ; that we are no longer to live in his 
sight, but to become as though we had never been ! 
Is this conscious being, which points to so high a 
destiny, to be only like the track of a ship in the 
waters ; visible for a moment and then effaced for 
ever ? Is this probable ? Or rather, if God loves 
the intelligent creatures whom he made, is it 
possible ? For whatever may be said of the fugitive 
good-will of poor human beings, it cannot for a 
moment be supposed that the love of God is 
evanescent, or that it is subject to any temporal 
limitations. 

The love of the Deity for his creatures must be 
permanent. And if this life cannot terminate his 
love, will that love permit this life, or rather the 
consciousness attached to it, to cease for ever ? If 
the love of God for man should not endure beyond 
the term of his present life, the love itself could not 
exist, or be proved to exist in numerous instances, 
in which the infliction of pain and suffering has 
been so continual and so great, as to weaken the 
argument for the Divine goodness, unless the 
present life be regarded only as a link in the chain 
of an interminable existence. The conviction of a 
future life is thus almost irresistibly forced upon 



THE UNIVERSE. 



217 



the mind ; and the more we reflect on the scheme 
of the moral world the stronger must be the im- 
pression, that another and better state of being 
will open upon the consciousness beyond the grave. 
As God is a benevolent being, the misery which 
he inflicts must have good for its object ; and the 
end must be the happiness of those who have 
experienced his salutary chastisement. No other 
supposition is reconcileable with a paternal ad- 
ministration of the universe. That administra- 
tion, however much it may, for the present, be 
obscured in a labyrinth of perplexing considera- 
tions, supposes an hereafter to which it tends, and 
where its provisions will be completed. 

As man is a moral agent, or has a sentiment of 
duty, by which he approves some actions as what 
he ought to do, and disapproves others as what 
ought not to be done, so he is placed in circum- 
stances which are favourable to the formation of 
moral character. These circumstances are very 
various ; and often have a discriminating accom- 
modation to the peculiar temperament of the 
individual, though they occasionally appear more 
calculated to retard than to promote this moral 
improvement. But a nice observer may perceive 



218 



THE RELIGION OF 



traces of moral discipline in the midst of circum- 
stances apparently the most adverse to its opera- 
tion, when habits of vice seem twining about 
the heart with such force of cohesion, that they 
can neither be untwisted by art nor dissevered by 
force. But it sometimes happens that vicious 
habits, producing their own punishment, will 
work their own cure. The period of declension 
follows the extremity of increase. 1 

In taking a survey of mankind, we may often 
behold moral character evolving itself out of the 
lowest depths of human corruption. This effect is 
slowly and almost imperceptibly produced in the 
varied operation of sentiments and circumstances, 
upon the mind and heart. Reflection is awakened 
by regret. The early delusions of sin disappear, 
its natural deformity is seen. The mind takes 
a more correct view of its greatest good ; and per- 
ceives that it is only to be found in a path where 

1 So, when in consequence of the fashionable Quakerism, and 
the peace mania of the present day, brute force shall have become 
triumphant, and all respect for morality and right have been 
trodden under foot, it may be hoped that in a salutary reaction 
men will resume that attitude of indignant resistance which 
nature has provided in the absence of better motives among nations, 
as among individuals, as a barrier against wrong. — Ed. 



THE UNIVERSE. 



219 



it has not hitherto been sought. But the growth 
of moral character, though rapid in particular 
individuals, is in many cases so slow that the 
principle, instead of having taken root and borne 
fruit, has hardly begun to germinate before the 
hour of parting life. The grave closes over the 
individual before any progress has been made in 
the moral purification of the heart. 

Even when the formation of moral character is 
begun under favourable circumstances, individuals 
often experience, for a longer or shorter period, 
alternations of vice and virtue indicating irre- 
solution or inconstancy. He, who ultimately 
climbs the steep ascent of virtue, is often pre- 
viously merged in profligacy and vice. After 
some struggles for a lasting liberation from the 
captivity of sin, the individual is again plunged 
in the same gulf, from which he again labours to 
reach the shore and to resume that path of probity 
and goodness which the wise and the righteous 
of all ages have remarked to constitute the most 
secure way to happiness. The final establishment 
of moral character is often preceded by a long 
interchange of convalescence and sickness, of 
recovery and relapse, The sentiment of duty has 



220 



THE RELIGION t)F 



to undergo a painful and protracted struggle with 
vicious inclination. 

In the view which I have taken of the moral 
administration to which man is subject, we may 
discern in the whole process, as far as it is open 
to our cognizance, a tendency to form the principle, 
and to promote the development of moral character. 
But where this principle is undeveloped, and the 
character unformed till the individual is on the 
point of dissolution, what avails the previous tissue 
of circumstances by which it has been gradually 
effected, unless there be a future life in which it is 
to be exercised ? Whence all this moral machinery, 
this nice adaptation of means to the production of 
a certain change in the character and habits of the 
individual, if at the moment of his decease, instead 
of being removed to a state suited to its exercise 
he is condemned to annihilation ? 

If this life be antecedent or preparatory to 
another the proof of such a supposition is not 
more clearly discerned in anything than in that 
singularly appropriate, though often highly com- 
plicated moral process, of which we may remark 
palpable traces in the lives of individuals ; and 
which almost every man, with very little acuteness 



THE UNIVERSE. 



221 



of observation or depth of reflection, may discri- 
minate in his own. 

We sometimes see a character of high moral 
excellence formed at an early period, when its 
many virtues are suddenly blasted by death hi 
their primary bloom/ as if the worth of the indi- 
vidual, too pure for a longer continuance in this 
gross scene, were suddenly removed to its proper 
sphere in a more genial climate, and under a less 
inclement sky. 

In the present scene of human existence, morally 
considered, every thing seems in an elementary 
state. Nothing is matured ; nothing finished. 
We behold virtue rather in the bud than in the 
bloom, rather in the primary germ than in the 
full blown flower. In all these appearances, we 
trace a relation to something to come. Nothing 
in this world is unfinished or incomplete but that 
which relates to the moral condition of man. The 
physical individual is perfect in his kind. Nothing 
is wanting to complete the organization. It is a 
whole without the possibility of improvement. 
But moral imperfections are visible to every eye. 
Hence some have regarded the moral world as the 

1 See Appendix (d). 



222 



THE RELIGION OF 



wreck of what has been ; as the vestige of a more 
perfect structure in a state of dilapidation and 
decay. But what they believe to be a ruin of a 
once perfect fabric, appears to me the beginning of 
a design that will be perfected hereafter. In the 
present moral scheme, as far as it is unfolded 
to me, I behold the evident rudiments of a con- 
stitution of things, with tendencies to perfection, 
that point to a higher, and more permanent 
existence. The moral world, of which we discern 
only a small, detached portion, appears a chaos 
of confusion ; but to the reflective observer, it is 
a chaos irradiated with flashes of light opening a 
cheering view on the distant future, and pointing 
to scenes of order, security, and joy. 

Even in this world, vice has a tendency to cause 
its own punishment, while virtue is constantly 
associated with a degree of internal self-satisfac- 
tion, which constitutes its highest recommendation. 
No man can seriously reflect on the present conse- 
quences of human actions, without being convinced 
that the cultivation of the moral virtues, indepen- 
dently of higher considerations, is necessary to 
that interior satisfaction which is the most essential 
ingredient of happiness. Although both reason 



THE UNIVERSE. 



223 



and experience forcibly impress this important 
truth, it is apt to be forgotten in the blandishments 
of criminal indulgence ; vet even that indulgence 
usually leaves behind it a sentiment of self-dis- 
satisfaction and regret, which tends to prepare the 
way for a return to better conduct. Even in the 
midst of the most complicated profligacy, when 
the mind becomes callous to shame, and the heart 
is hardened in iniquity, we may remark a strong 
renitency in the moral administration of the world, 
as it respects even such individuals, to let the 
principle of virtue be wholly subjugated. And 
hence the very extremity of vice occasionally 
proves the point where the first germs of a virtuous 
character appear. And if this operation often 
commences too late in life for the plant to reach 
anything like a maturity of growth, have we not, 
hence, reason to hope that the virtuous principles, 
which have been elicited so late in the present 
life, are destined to expand in another ? 

Moral distinctions certainly exist in the present 
constitution of things. The differences between 
light and darkness, hot and cold, sweet and bitter, 
or between any other physical oppositions, are not 
more strongly marked, than between truth and 



224 



THE RELIGION OF 



falsehood, justice and injustice, sincerity and 
deception. Physical differences are not more 
palpable to the corporeal sense, than moral 
differences are to the understanding. These 
differences are not arbitrary or conventional, but 
fixed and permanent realities. They are not 
mere products of opinion, but have an independent 
existence. 

But then it would be very difficult to conjecture, 
at least in many instances, for what purpose moral 
differences exist, unless human conduct has a re- 
ference to some ulterior state. For in this world, 
though there is a difference in the nature of vice 
and virtue, there is often a want of difference in 
the apparent results. All things happen alike to 
all. The temperate man is sometimes more short- 
lived than the drunkard ; the honest man is frus- 
trated in his schemes, whilst the fraudulent succeeds 
in every thing that he attempts. A cold and 
insensate selfishness seems occasionally to bloom 
in all the varieties of fruition, whilst in an opposite 
direction, we behold an individual perishing of a 
fever, occasioned by some noble act of disinterested 
benevolence. 

It was reflections of this nature which suggested 



THE UNIVERSE. 



225 



some of the noblest passages of the Old Testament ; 
passages in which a future life is spoken of, not 
as a dogmatic certainty, but as an exalted and 
encouraging hope. Are some of the best and 
noblest virtues only to experience an interval of 
suffering, and then to vanish for ever ? Is there 
to be no reward for the righteous ? Is the differ- 
ence between vice and virtue, which is approved 
by the highest understanding, a mere illusion? 
Instead of being permanent and universal, is it only 
fortuitous and contingent ? Has it only a particu- 
lar locality ; and is it circumscribed in its effects 
within the circle of some particular individuals ? 
This cannot be ; — but if moral differences be certain 
and immutable realities, there must be a future 
life for a more full development of their effects. 

The moral government of the world, if we could 
view it not merely in small detached parts, but in 
its comprehensive agency as a perfect whole, would 
undoubtedly be found in unison with that internal 
sentiment of moral fitness which was impressed 
upon the mind by the Author of our frame ; or, 
in other words, by the Maker and Father of the 
universe. His administration, however devious 
and irregular it may seem to our dim views and 
limited conceptions, cannot be really opposite to 

15 



226 



THE RELIGION OF 



his own laws, or to the most exalted wisdom and 
most perfect goodness : and therefore where there 
is such an apparent opposition, the instances can 
denote only parts of an unfinished scheme, and 
must be considered as certain and consolatory 
indications that this state has a necessary con- 
nection with something to come. 

The truth of a future life thus appears to me 
to be deducible from the moral phenomena of the 
universe. And though the question may still seem 
enveloped in uncertainty, that uncertainty is not 
greater than the state of human life and the 
moral constitution of human beings rendered 
necessary. Man is a reasonable being, and reason 
rather than sense was designed for his guide ; but 
how is reason to be exercised, where probability is 
excluded, and only certainty prevails ? All moral 
questions must be questions of probability. The 
moral agency of man turns, in a great measure 
on a calculation of probabilities. 

In weighing the probabilities in favour of a 
future life, the evidence is sufficient to influence 
hope, but not to impede action. . There is, there- 
fore, to those who reflect seriously, a remarkable 
congruity between the evidence obtainable in 
favour of a future life and the circumstances of 



THE UNIVERSE. 



227 



the present. The circumstances of the present life 
require a vigorous exercise of the active powers. 
Without it we can make no considerable advances 
in civilisation or in the felicities of social intercourse. 

The most necessary and immediate interests of 
man impel him to improve his condition in the 
present life. It was therefore obviously desirable 
that the impressions made by the probabilities of a 
future life should not be strong enough to counter- 
act this principle. Had the evidence approached 
nearer to certainty, or actually reached it, it would 
have chilled the sensation of present interest so 
as to paralj r ze the active powers. It would have 
destroyed the salutary influence of worldly motives 
on human agency. The exclusion of doubt would 
have been fatal to freedom of choice ; and if the 
evidence of a future life had been more faint than 
it actually is, it could not have been employed as a 
ground of hope in adversity, or of comfort in distress. 

While the circumstances of life are such as to 
require action in the pursuit of happiness, they 
also present frequent occasions in which consolation 
is needed by the distressed. The exercise of the 
active powers is sufficiently stimulated by present 
necessity; and the best and most natural solace 
in that misery which admits of no present cure 



228 



THE RELIGION OF THE UNIVERSE, 



or temporary alleviation, is the cheering hope of a 
state after death exempted from trouble and woe. 
The evidence which we have of a future life is 
sufficient for this purpose, but not more than 
sufficient. It does not make the truth so manifest 
as to obscure those considerations of present interest 
which ought never to be entirely excluded from 
the view of man in his passage through the present 
life. For man is a creature both of time and of 
eternity. And though finite objects and fugitive 
interests ought not to engross all his care ; yet 
the care of those objects and interests ought not 
to be despised or totally forgotten in the pursuit 
of the infinite and eternal. If man be only an 
ephemeral being, still it is of the greatest im- 
portance, both to himself and others, how he 
conducts himself during the short day of his actual 
existence. Where reason controls, and virtue 
directs the active powers, the interests of time will 
be found to harmonize with those of eternity. 
But, in the pursuit of the lesser interest, it well 
behoves us not to lose sight of the more exalted 
and more permanent. The light of immortality, 
which shines beyond the grave, though far from 
being the broad and perfect day, is still vivid 
enough to cheer and to -console. 



APPENDIX. 



{a t page 152). The following thoughts on the Church 
of England prayers, and on praying in general, are 
extracted from the first article in the second number 
of the London Review. The whole article is well worthy 
the attention of the reader. It is the work of a writer 
long celebrated for great strength of reasoning, clearness 
of view, and profundity of thought. 

" The tendency of the Church of England prayers is 
to give a wrong notion of the Divine attributes ; and, 
instead of the idea of a Being of perfect wisdom and 
goodness, to present the idea of a Being very imperfect 
in both. To speak of them in the most general way, we 
may observe, that perpetually to be asking God for 
things which we want, believing that this is a way 
to obtain them, implies the belief that God is imperfect, 
both in wisdom and goodness. Telling God unceasingly 
of our wants, implies that he needs to be told of them — 
otherwise it is an unmeaning ceremony. Asking him 
continually to do things for us, implies our belief that 
otherwise he would not do them for us ; in other words, 
our belief, either that God will not do what is right, 



230 



APPENDIX, 



if he be not begged and entreated to do so, or that by- 
being begged or entreated, he can be induced to do 
what is wrong. 

" In like manner, with regard to praise, which is the 
other element of what is called prayer ; first what use 
can there be in our telling the Divine Being that he 
has such and such qualities ; as if he was like to mistake 
his own qualities, by some imperfections in his know- 
ledge, which we supply ? Next, what a mean and gross 
conception of the Divine nature is implied in supposing 
that, like the meanest of men, God is delighted in 
listening to his own praises ! Surely, practices which 
have this tendency, if they are considered as having 
any meaning at ail, it is much better to consider as 
having no meaning — that is, as being mere ceremonies. 

"But as it is too evident to need any illustration that 
the idea of the Divine Being, as a Being of perfect wisdom 
and goodness, so steadily and luminously fixed in the 
mind, as to be a principle of action, is the very essence 
of religion, and the sole source of all the good im- 
pressions we derive from it, it is not less evident, that 
every idea instilled into us, which implies imperfection 
in the Divine Being, is a perversion of the religious 
principle, and so far as it goes, converts it into a 
principle of evil. Because, exactly in so far as men 
set up for the object of their worship a being who falls 
short of perfect wisdom and goodness, so far they manu- 
facture to themselves a motive for the practice of what 
is contrary to wisdom and goodness. Yet it is self- 
evident, that to offer petitions to the Divine Being, 



APPENDIX. 



231 



with the idea that they will have any effect — that every 
thing being already ordered for the best, will not 
proceed in the same way, exactly as if no snch petition 
had been made, is to suppose the petitioner either wiser 
or better than his Maker — either knowing better what 
is fit to be done, or more in earnest about the doing it.' 7 

(5, page 170). When I first wrote this part of the 
work I had inserted several pages, which I have since 
erased, on the argument in favour of a future life, from 
the preservation of the mental identity amidst all the 
changes which the body undergoes. But it is very 
doubtful whether that inference is warranted by the 
premises ; though a late great authority has argued as 
if it were clear to demonstration; and proved "the 
possible immortality of the soul almost as rigorously as 
if one were to rise from the dead." — See Lord Brougham's 
Discourse on Natural Theology, p. 124. 

It is certainly true that the body in the course of 
a long life undergoes several total changes while the 
mind remains the same and unchanged. But did it not 
occur to the noble author that this total change of the 
corporeal substance does not take place suddenly and 
simultaneously; but by a very slow and very gradual 
assimilation of the new matter to the old ! This, there- 
fore, will account for the new matter taking on the 
action and habits of the old; and so far, even on the 
material hypothesis, for the preservation of the mental 
identity notwithstanding the change of substance in 
the corporeal organization. The material of the organic 



232 



APPENDIX. 



tissue is so tardily repaired and so imperceptibly 
renewed as not to destroy the identity of the agency 
and the continuity of the functions. If the mechanism 
of a harpsichord could he changed in the same way, and 
by the same slow process, so that the same structure 
was preserved, with similar keys and chords and quills, 
though the material of which they were made was 
totally different from what it was in its primary state, 
the risible, as well as potential, identity of the instru- 
ment would be preserved. It would play the same 
tunes and be susceptible of the same harmony. In a 
similar manner the brain retains the same self- conscious- 
ness, though its old substance is periodically changed, 
so that, at the end of a few years, not one fibre of the 
self-same material is left. Does not the mark of a 
wound received in childhood often remain to the end 
of life ! 

My Lord Brougham, on whom no higher praise can 
be bestowed than that of having been among the first 
and the most influential in sending the schoolmaster on 
his errand of popular illumination, argues, {Discourse 
p. 122, etc.) "From the mind continuiug the same, 
while all, or nearly all, the body is changed, that the 
existence of the mind depends not in the least degree upon 
the existence of the hodi/. v If this is the case, how is it 
that a full stomach will render the memory torpid, the 
imagination dull, and the whole mind drowsy and inert ? 
If the thinking faculty be totally separate and distinct 
from the grosser mechanism of the brain, and depends 
not in the least degree upon it, how comes it to pass 



APPENDIX. 



233 



that' the intellectual powers are so soon and so sensibly 
affected by an injury to the substance, or any dis- 
turbance in the motions of that mechanism ? 

The truth is that we are as yet, and perhaps ever 
shall be, utterly in the dark with respect to the ideology 
of the brain. 'VTe cannot, therefore, draw any satis- 
factory conclusion from it, either one way or the other, 
with respect to a future life. The great argument on that 
subject must still, and, I believe, ever will, rest on moral 
considerations. If the moral scheme is necessarily im- 
perfect without a future state, the goodness of God, if 
we believe in that goodness, is a sufficient pledge for the 
reality of such a state r If the goodness of God is a 
fixed assurance in the mind, what other pledge of im- 
mortality do we need, or can we require : If we have 
not a full and satisfactory belief in that goodness, then 
I say to the sceptic : — Go and seek it in the Eeligion 
of the Universe. There it is written, not in dark and 
ambiguous hieroglyphics, but in such clear and luminous 
characters, as will impress the truth on the most com- 
mon understanding. And I ask my Lord Brougham, 
whether it is not better to rest the argument on the 
indubitable goodness of God, than on the psychological 
ignorance of man ? 

(c, page 214} Many years have elapsed since I 
expressed the following sentiments in a letter to the 
late Sir John Sinclair. 

"In all religionists, whatever maybe the diversity 
of their rituals, the sentiment of piety, as far as it is 



234 



APPENDIX, 



sincere, must be essentially the same. For man has a 
common nature, not only in his grosser appetites, but in 
his purer sympathies and affections. The unsophisti- 
cated sentiment of piety cannot be essentially different 
in a Hindoo or in a Mahometan, from what it is in 
a Jew or a Christian. For are their hearts essentially 
different ? Their common sympathies and affections, 
when considered as relative to each other, are evidently 
the same : and how can those sympathies and affections, 
when God is their object, be essentially different : The 
theopathetic affections are, by the nature of man and 
the constitution of the world, made common to every 
human breast. In some they are not seen for want 
of culture ; and in others they have been extinguished 
by neglect, or depraved by habit ; but the principle 
is inherent in all. The theopathetic sentiment seems 
indeed, exclusively characteristic of the human species.' ' 

(d, page 221). The following letter was written to 
a friend, and one of the " Society of Friends" on the 
loss of an only child. It is here printed, because it 
is intimately connected with the mode of reasoning 
and the tone of sentiment in the text ; while it tends 
to show that there is something sweet, and benign, and 
consolatory in the theopathetic affections which the 
Religion of the Uxivekse inspires. 

" !Mt deab Sie. — Though many years have now 

elapsed since I used to occasionally see you at , 

yet I could not hear of the great loss, which I was 
accidentally informed that you had sustained, without 



APPENDIX. 



235 



feeling for you the deepest sorrow ; and, at least in 
sympathy, making your suffering my own. Great, 
indeed, and most heart-rending is the calamity yon have 
experienced ; too great and too heart-rending for any 
consolation to soothe, or any commiseration to mitigate. 
You and your dear partner in affliction are now, as it 
were, left solitary and destitute ; — your sweetest comfort 
gone— the hope of your age taken away. — Yet when 
the first agonizing pangs of such a separation have 
ceased, when the first ebullitions of grief have passed 
away and a calmer moment ensues, then, in the silent 
depths of reflection, commune with thine own heart ; 
meditate upon the past, and look forward to the future. 
Hast thou not done thy duty as a parent ought ? Hast 
thou evinced any neglect, any indifference in so sacred 
a charge ? Hast thou not rather been unremitting in 
thy attentions, unwearied in thy endeavours to promote 
the physical and moral good of the beloved object? 
Didst thou not labour to fit her for a long life of 
happiness ? "What couldst thou do more ? The endea- 
vour is all that can be the work of man ; the result 
belongs to God. The human agency must be subordi- 
nate to the Divine. Thy hopes are frustrated ! The 
darling of thy mind, the cherished of thy heart, 
is vanished for ever from the parental embrace ! She 
did not live to bloom ! She is cut off in the very budding 
of her days. But can so afflicting a catastrophe be pro- 
duced without a benevolent intent ? Does man love his 
offspring ? Does he study their welfare, and often even 
at the expense of his own r Does he sympathise with 



236 



APPENDIX. 



their joj T s and sorrows? Does he interest himself in 
every event of their lives ? And has the Eternal no 
parental affection for those whom he has made ? Are 
they not objects of his care? If goodness be his 
attribute, he must love those whom he has created. 
He cannot wantonly inflict incurable wounds, or des- 
pitefully cause aggravated distress. If he causes pain 
and woe, and plunges whole families in affliction, if he 
makes children orphans and parents childless, it must 
be for a special purpose, and with a benevolent intent. 
Thy child, then, is not dead, but departed ; not anni- 
hilated but removed. Her body may moulder into dust, 
but her self-consciousness is immortal. Her premature 
end, instead of exciting despondency, should kindle 
hope. It is an argument for a better and a higher state 
of being; an argument not made up of idle topics, or 
lost in distant generalities, but immediately applied 
and individually addressed to thy suffering soul. Grieve 
not as one without hope; for the very matter of thy 
grief is the ground of hope. Thy wound contains its 
own healing ; thy sorrow its own alleviation. The 
Divine agency that lacerates thy feelings, drops balm 
into the incisions it makes. Death has thrown a deep 
shadow across thy path ; but in that shadow there 
is a light that speaks to the mind, that throws rays of 
comfort on the dark present, and illumines the distant 
future. 

"I am, affectionately and faithfully, 
" Your friend, 

"ROBERT EELLOWES. 

"Nov. 26th, 1829. 

k '31, Dorset-square, London" 



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